Dealing with the cost of living crisis whilst running a charity.

“As I spent the morning working through a detailed cash flow for the organisation until March 2023, it led me to reflect on the challenges that we all now face as a sector. Covid was a challenging time with lots of extra needs in our communities. But what also came with this was new investment which allowed us to respond quickly and develop our services to meet this growing need. We now find ourselves heading towards a new cost of living crisis for our communities, the difference this time is we are also heading to a cost of living crisis for charities.

“I was told last week there are currently 150,000 vacancies in Gloucestershire alone at the moment. We find ourselves in a time where there are more vacancies than ever before, with the cost of living crisis driving salaries up. In addition to this in the last few months we have seen our gas and electric bill double (it is looking like this will happen again) many of our costs, such as resource costs, have increased by 10%, our fuel bill and mileage claims have significantly increased and back in April we awarded our staff a 4.5% cost of living pay rise to help them deal with their affordability challenges.

“Alongside all of this, our income hasn’t changed. Contracts we are delivering haven’t seen an increase in price and it is believed there will be less funding available next year and limited inflation increases. On top of this due to austerity there has been little invested in youth work training and development in the last eight years. It feels like we are heading towards a black hole. Around 85% of our spending is on staff salaries, we are a people facing organisation, which means there are few areas we can make savings to support the increasing salary, utilities and fuel bills.

“And we are not the only ones feeling the pinch. We are also seeing an increase in need in our communities, growing waiting lists of young people who require our help, support and guidance.

“The question for debate is how we meet the growing need, whilst balancing our increased outgoings and recruitment challenges? How do we continue to provide services and respond to challenges in the world we find ourselves in? When will we find ourselves losing charities/services within our communities because they can no longer survive?

“We are determined this won’t happen to us, we are increasing our fundraising efforts, we are increasing our investment in training to ensure our staff are the most skilled they can be, we are looking at the detail of our finances to ensure we are managing as efficiently as we can. We are continuing to develop services, respond to needs, and ensure that we are supporting our communities in the best way we can. We are committed to young people and families and we will continue to seek to find innovative and creative ways to meet needs.

“We are also committed to looking after our staff and will continue to seek to implement additional cost of living pay rises, appropriate expenses and training. The management team here at Young Gloucestershire and Infobuzz have been debating how we can continue to meet the high standards those who receive our services expect from us. We believe our staff team and the exceptional work they do are at the heart of it. We have implemented a whole range of steps to ensure that we are supporting, developing and enabling our staff to achieve outcomes for those we work with, this includes:

• A week long induction process for new staff to ensure everyone is given a clear and good on boarding experience.

• An internal training calendar to upskill and develop our teams, we are adding to this all the time.

• An internal management development programme to allow staff to grow and develop.

• Counselling support and clinical supervision for our teams where needed.

• Team events and activities to allow team development and growth as well as have fun together and to celebrate our successes (this includes summer and Christmas parties for the staff and or their families).

• Developing well-being zones within our buildings so staff and young people can take time out.

• Ensuring our buildings and resources are of a high standard to enable a good working environment.

• Weekly safeguarding drop-in sessions to get support with more challenging cases.

• Bi-monthly supervisions for all staff.

• Well-being action plans and discussion opportunities for staff where needed.

• Development of an equality and diversity subgroup and strategy.

• A commitment to review the impact of cost of living each year (we have provided a cost of living pay increase consistently for the last eight years).

• A commitment to pay above the minimum living wage.

“We hope all these steps, as well as the ongoing culture conversations that are taking place within our teams across the organisation, help us to continue to improve our workplace and help staff to feel support so they can be the best they can be. We hope in return, our teams will commit to do the best job they can, be passionate about the young people and families they work with and strive to hit targets which means they are getting results for young people.

“What we ask of our supporters; be patient as we battle our growing waiting lists and increasing costs. Connect us to people who may be able to support us with fundraising, people who may want to volunteer to mentor young people, people who might want to work with young people in our communities. If you want to join a team of people who are seeking to positively impact and improve the situation for others then why not take a look at our jobs page on our website.

“As an organisation we gave it our all through Covid and we will give it our all through the current financial crisis and all of your support is greatly appreciated.”