Blogs

Is Oblong Antifragile?

Its 2 months since funding for our Volunteer scheme ‘Make a Difference’ funded by Big Lottery - Reaching Communities came to an abrupt end. You can read what Mark said at the time here.

 

The gist of it being that staff hours nose dived from 160 a week to 90 and we had less money to support groups and Volunteers so no sandwiches although we did have a few bus tokens left (shush).

 

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.

 

Steady as she goes or sinking ship - how an organisation like Oblong keeps afloat in difficult financial waters

Have you ever thought how small charities like Oblong survive? Where do they get their money from? What money do they get?

 

As with all things, it isn’t simple.

 

Only five years ago nearly all of Oblong’s income came from grants. We knew then that that wasn’t sustainable. We needed a strategy that would move us away from grant dependency and towards a diverse range of income streams.

 

Would CCTV improve the Oblong space?

We pride ourselves at Oblong at listening to people and lots of what i am hearing back from surveys, at the bobalong and in conversation around security is that ‘its not secure in the ICT area’ and the stand out solution seems to be CCTV is the best bet.

 

Personally i have mixed opinions on this. First, i completely agree it is less secure in the ICT area (but not as much as you think) and secondly my initial emotional reaction to the idea of CCTV is that its some big brother invasion of mine and your civil liberties and statistically doesn't deter crime.