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In 2022, CharityJob made donations to several small charities as part of our commitment to give back to the sector. A year on, we’re delighted to hear from those charities about how they’ve used the money and the impact it’s had. Here are their inspirational stories.
21&Co
Based around South West London and Surrey, 21&Co is a parent-run group dedicated to supporting families who have children and young people with Down’s syndrome.
We were extremely excited to receive the news that we’d won a £15,000 donation from CharityJob. The timing was perfect. Our membership has grown and over half our members are now teenagers, so we needed to expand our offering to this cohort. We decided to double the capacity for our weekly drama club by offering a second time slot on Tuesdays after school.
Our drama sessions have 12 to 15 young people in each group. As they require a high level of support, we need a very high staff-to-child ratio and this is a major cost to the charity. We’ve now run this group successfully for a year, and the parents and young people have been absolutely delighted.
‘Tuesday is Luke’s favourite day because it’s “Drama Day”,’ says Luke’s mum Henrietta. ‘When he comes out of class he is wearing the biggest smile. When he started a year ago I was nervous, as Luke has quite limited speech. But what quickly became apparent is that this is no barrier to participation or enjoyment.’
Action on Postpartum Psychosis (APP)
APP is the only UK charity dedicated to supporting women and families affected by postpartum psychosis. They facilitate research, offer training, and provide information, peer support and advocacy.
The £15,000 donation we received from CharityJob was much needed. It’s made such a difference to us and to the families we support. It’s helped us sustain, strengthen and develop our peer support service, which we know changes and saves lives.
This year, we’ve provided ongoing one-to-one support to more than 50 individuals, including mothers, partners and grandparents. We’ve also facilitated and run 32 online peer support café groups. Our online forum now has more than 3,400 members, with 229 users each month on average. We’ve sent our information guides, flyers and awareness-raising posters to families and healthcare providers across the country.
‘I don’t know what I would have done without the support and reassurance of APP when my daughter became ill with postpartum psychosis,’ says one of our service users. ‘I hadn’t heard of this traumatic illness before. They were there for me and my daughter through the ups and downs of her recovery.’
Another says: ‘Without this service and the people supporting me I would not be here today.’
Doodle Rescue
The charity Doodle Rescue is a foster-based, volunteer-run rescue organisation. It rehomes poodle cross dogs to carefully vetted families matched to the individual dog’s needs.
We’ve always had to consider carefully which doodles we can help, partly based on the financial implication for us. Fundraising hasn’t been easy in the current economic climate.
The £10,000 donation from CharityJob has made a huge difference. It’s enabled us to really focus on doodles that had been written off. Without a doubt, it’s not only saved the lives of many doodles, but given them a very real chance at a happy and fulfilled life.
What’s been amazing, and a lasting legacy, is that it’s enabled us to purchase a kennel. This means we can work very quickly to rescue doodles that need out of their current environment and place them in a safe place to decompress and be assessed.
Sam is just one of the many doodles that CharityJob’s donation has helped. He’s a seven year-old bichon cross who was rescued from an abusive home. We boarded him in kennels until we could secure him a place on the behavioural training scheme, which enabled him to find his forever home.
Kairos Community Trust
The Linden Grove Abstinence-Support Hostel offers a supportive, non-judgemental, safe, sober and clean environment where individuals can begin to rebuild their lives without alcohol or drugs. Residents typically stay between three and six months.
We offer a full programme of recovery, with weekly one-to-one counselling and support work, constant monitoring of residents and staff onsite 24/7. The success rate is between 60 and 70 percent. We don’t have any government funds or specific budget allocations, and therefore rely solely on housing benefits and external donations.
CharityJob’s donation of £15,000 came as a great surprise and has been extremely beneficial. We’ve used it to update some of our communal bathrooms; to improve the appearance of our entrance and reception; to upgrade our staff office with new desks, painting and decorating; and to change most of the carpets in the bedrooms and main stairwell.
The whole experience was positively enhancing and restored, in me, a little faith in humanity.
Little Hearts Matter
National charity Little Hearts Matter supports and empowers anyone affected by the diagnosis of a single ventricle heart condition—or half a working heart.
This year, the number of families that need support navigating the half a heart journey has increased. The £15,000 donation from CharityJob has helped us continue to be there for everyone who needs us. We’ve been able to provide our support service every day of the year, including groups, information booklets and in-person events.
The donation helped fund our Summer Family Event, a highlight of the year. Families could come for the day or stay for the weekend. It was a chance for them to meet others with similar conditions, make friends who understand the rollercoaster journey they’re on and have lots of fun too!
‘The weekend was amazing,’ says one young adult with half a heart. ‘We did so much and it was good as I felt I wasn’t slowing people down. We all were going at the same pace and we all felt tired at the same time. It meant I wasn’t feeling left out as I might have felt with my friends.’
We’d absolutely encourage small charities to apply for CharityJob’s 2023 donation. The team were friendly and helpful, and the process was really simple for such a significant amount.
My Sisters’ House
West Sussex-based charity My Sisters’ House works with local women to improve welfare and wellbeing, reduce domestic abuse risks and support recovery after abuse.
We’ve seen a dramatic increase in women needing our services, from 527 clients in 2020 to 1,325 in 2022. If this trajectory continues, we predict we’ll have supported over 1,600 women by the end of 2023. Unfortunately, as with many small charities, we’re facing this drastically higher demand at a time of spiralling costs and lower levels of funding.
We were delighted to hear that we’d won CharityJob’s generous £15,000 donation. And because it was unrestricted funding, we were able to put it exactly where it was needed to support as many clients as effectively as possible.
It arrived at the perfect time to enable us to continue our Thrive Programme, which supports women into employment, training, education and volunteering. Alongside the one-to-one support and wellbeing, confidence and employment courses, we were also able to launch a monthly jobs club where women come for support with job hunting, filling out applications and printing documents. Without CharityJob’s donation we may have been forced to close this much-needed service altogether.
The Harbour
Bristol-based charity The Harbour provides counselling to people facing death, dying and bereavement.
CharityJob’s £15,000 donation has been invaluable―we were absolutely over the moon to get the news that we’d won it. It’s had a huge impact on our work.
The combination of the cost of living crisis and the ongoing impact of covid is creating enormous challenges for those facing death, dying and bereavement. It’s affecting both the community in which we work and our ability to meet the increased need. So this donation has really helped us and our clients during a difficult time.
88% of the people using our service in the last financial year said their emotional wellbeing was improved after counselling at The Harbour. 96% were ‘very satisfied’ with the service. One of our clients who has a life-threatening illness said: “I feel that I may have just got what is left of my life back.”
To any small charity considering applying for 2023 funding, go for it! It was a straightforward application process and the team at CharityJob have been great.
Tags: charity job, charity sector
