May 1st is Approaching Fast

one from the past

As you are aware the funding for our Big Lottery programme Make a Difference finishes at the end of April. What does this mean? Well, we’ll have to reduce the number of hours we can pay staff (from a 160 hours a week to 90 - and a lot of those hours are for doing things out of the building like Head Space), so you’ll see a lot less of the staff around the building and often they’ll be here on their own. The reduction in funding has meant that we’ve had to radically re-think how we maintain the building and services that we provide. We do have a plan that we’ve now agreed with our Trustees.

 

We have submitted a new Big Lottery bid, but it could be a few months before we know if we’ve been successful or not.

 

In the meantime we’re going to have to tighten our belts.

 

We are now facing a dilemma. At a time, when more than ever, we need the support of our volunteers we’re not going to have the resources, both in terms of staff hours and finances, to offer the support that we have been doing.

 

From the start of May volunteer led activities (including Media and Creative, Craft and a Cuppa, Oblong Cinema) will have little or no staff support. There will be no money for volunteer led activities. We’re also afraid that there will be limited out of pocket expenses. We’ll have a supply of bus vouchers but we will be unable to pay lunch expenses.

 

The only volunteer project with funding at the moment is the gardening group. It’s not just gardening - we’ll need help doing woodwork, taking photos, chatting to neighbours and organising a celebration day. If you want to get involved please talk to Duncan.

 

There may be a creative way of providing lunch each day and we’ll be working on that. We would really like to talk to volunteers who have a food hygiene certificate who could help out.

 

We are committed to working with our volunteers, stakeholders and our community to provide the best opportunities we can. We’ve gone through things like this before and always come out stronger but we’ll need your patience and your help to do this over the next couple of months.

Thanks,
Oblong Staff