A few words from Walter Hecht, our Chief Executive.
I’m sure that people are sick of hearing me go on about the funding cuts soon to hit the charitable sector and our concerns as to how it will affect everyone connected to Cosgrove whether they are services users, families, staff or supporters.
I’m sure that people are sick of hearing me go on about the funding cuts soon to hit the charitable sector and our concerns as to how it will affect everyone connected to Cosgrove whether they are services users, families, staff or supporters.
Nonetheless I and my colleagues have to keep banging this drum because even though we haven’t yet been formally given hard evidence of the cuts and what it will mean to the provision of services, we’re only a few weeks away from hearing firm news from our public funders of their budgets cuts for future years. This will then make us better placed to assess the situation and plan realistically for what we can and can’t afford to provide and how we approach funding gaps.
Over the years we’ve prided ourselves on running a tight ship at Cosgrove and as things currently stand we’re in a financially solid position but today isn’t the problem, it’s the prospect of having to cut services in future unless we somehow replace the lost income and that simply has to come from more aggressive and creative fundraising particularly with the help of our families.
We do appreciate that our families have a lot to contend with already, but despite that many of them have come forward and offered to help in whatever way they can as they come to realise what it would mean to their lives if key services were cut.
We must somehow get the other families on board and make them realise that they can’t simply wait to see what happens or expect others to solve the problems because that isn’t fair and it won’t be enough. We have bolstered our fundraising resource by adding to our employed staff particularly a Community Fundraising Officer to raise our profile and gain financial support locally.
Just as importantly we have recruited a Volunteer Coordinator on a voluntary basis himself to identify key volunteers to support the work of the organisation in various areas particularly fundraising, IT and PR and ease the mounting pressure on our staff as we get more involved in a variety of fundraising events. We are in the throes of professionalising our procedures and communications to ensure we’re as well placed as we can be to face the challenges but the bottom line is we need our families to step up.
