£10,000 matched funding awarded to Home-Start from Four Acre Trust
We were delighted to have recently been awarded £10,000 of matched funding from the Four Acre Trust. And it could not have come at a more opportune time, as we are seeing a surge in demand for family support at the moment. We are so grateful for this crucial matched funding, which will help us meet this increased demand for our services.
Funding over the last year has been an interesting area. At the start of the pandemic, Home-Start Royston, Buntingford & South Cambridgeshire (Home-Start) battened down the hatches and prepared for a devastating year financially. With the sudden loss of all of our planned fundraising and community events, the funding landscape looked bleak and we wondered what the forthcoming year would mean for our charity, financially.
Things don’t always go according to plan, do they? And little did we know that with the tremendous support from our local community, along with funding secured from various emergency sources, we finished the year surpassing our original fundraising target, which was quite incredible.
Going into the forthcoming financial year, we do so with some trepidation. Our funding landscape continues to be ‘rocky’. The availability of emergency funding has reduced and in addition to that, the perceived ‘emergency’ aspect of the CV-19 has passed, potentially leaving our charity facing challenging funding situations. We are busily planning lots of face to face events with our community partners, but without a crystal ball it is difficult to be sure whether these will go ahead, need to be re-jigged, postponed or potentially cancelled.
As people return to work, the ‘crisis’ feeling around needing to support charities like Home-Start becomes less prominent. As a result, the importance of supporting Home-Start financially becomes further from peoples’ minds. Add into that the possibility that donors are feeling fatigued – there have been so many wonderful steps stepped, races run, silences held, sit-ups sat and heads shaved. The focus for many people has shifted, leaving charities with even more work to do in order to continue securing essential funding needed to support families and meet the increased demand in need.
So that’s why this matched funding opportunity is so incredible for Home-Start. The award means that every donation that the charity receives between now and 30 September 2021 will be doubled by Four Acre Trust up to a limit of £10,000 in total. The Trust stipulates that:
- the donation must be a minimum of £500 per donor,
- must be from a new donor, and
- must be donated by 30 September 2021.
So, for every £500 that is donated by a new donor, the amount will actually be worth £1,000 to Home-Start – enough to pay for 3 volunteers initial training or support a family with one-to-one support for 6 months or provide a summer outing for up to 30 families.
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