Rising costs impacting charities’ ability to provide support

There’s no getting away from the cost-of-living crisis. Turn on your TV, radio or scroll through your social feeds and there will be some reference to how expensive it is to do anything at the moment—even simply existing.

Charities who work in health and wellbeing, and those supporting poverty of any kind, will be seeing their beneficiary numbers increase week on week. If it’s not tangible support, such as the provision of food, clothing and basic essentials, it’s support with the fallout of the stress around debt and poverty, i.e. counselling, mental health support, etc.

I know of a small number of charities who are in quite precarious positions. Escalating prices have seen them running at a deficit to provide the support they committed to in their funding agreements.

Sure, it only takes a phone call to said funders with the suggestion that the project is scaled back/cut short. The vast majority of them will agree—they’ll fully understand the reason for your request and the impact of the current financial landscape. Legally, everything will be fine.

But what about the beneficiaries? How heart-breaking will it be to say to them:

· We can’t invite you into the centre/social café because we can’t afford to put the lights/heating on

· We’ve run out of food to distribute or we been unable to collect food that’s perfectly good to eat because we couldn’t afford to put petrol in/insure the van

· We don’t have enough volunteers to run the event/clinic because they’re too ill from the effects of no heating or food to get out of bed

· We can’t give you any help today…we can no longer afford our support staff/commissions

· You’re the only one who’s come along to this event/session, no one else can afford the travel costs

· We’ve had to limit the number of people we can afford to support

· We’re stopping/withdrawing our support; we’re having to wrap up the organisation

At the beginning of the pandemic, grant-making organisations were falling over themselves to give unrestricted funding to charities, to help them stay afloat as Covid made its impact. Two years on, with a new crisis to survive (and one that’s just as significant a threat to people’s health and lives), will those same grant-makers be as proactive in getting funds to the organisations that need it?