Meet #TeamDevine: Jenni Green, our Trusts and Foundations Fundraiser

We often talk about how our children’s hospice service relies on fundraising and donations to fund the vital work we do. 96% of our income, to be precise.

Donations from Charitable Trusts and Foundations have played a key role over the years in firstly making our children’s hospice service a reality and then continuing to help us fund key parts of our service. Now many of these organisations are looking at ways to help charities like ours which are facing difficult times due to Covid-19.

This week in #MeetTheTeam, Jenni Green our Trusts and Foundations Fundraiser tells us about the work she does to reach out to these organisations and the difference they can make to our children’s hospice service:

“Charitable Trusts and Foundations have played an important role in making our children’s hospice service a reality, and they are critical in helping us to fund elements of what we do.  We are very fortunate that a number of these establishments have been there for us since the very beginning and enabled us to continue to grow and develop our service. Indeed, when our fundraising income stopped almost overnight as a result of Covid-19, we were incredibly grateful to have the rapid support of Trusts like Anna and Colin Frizzell, Louis Baylis and Trysil. They understood our need for emergency funds to help us through this difficult time with our losses amounting to over £100,000 a month.

 

Reaching out to new Trusts and Foundations that could help support aspects of our work is a crucial part of my role. Their support can really change lives. For example, we’ve had grants to fund essential training of our Clinical Nurse specialists, vital resources for our specialist play service, uniforms and transport grants to help some of the children we support access our services. We are lucky to have secured a number of partnerships with Charitable Trusts and Foundations who will fund specific elements of our service over two or three years, which is brilliant and helps with our long-term financial planning and sustainability. 

 

As a result of Covid-19, it has been welcome news that a lot of emergency funding has been released and some Trusts and Foundations have brought the next round of funding forward to help charities through this difficult time. Some have also sped up the time it takes for a decision to be made so charities like ours can access grants quicker. However competition is really tough and the number of applications for funding far outweighs the funds available. It can be very challenging to win new support and rejections can be tough, especially due to the time it takes to pull together information for each application.

 

If any trustees of a Charitable Trust or Foundation are interested in hearing more about the work of our children’s hospice service and the impact it has on families across Berkshire and the surrounding counties, I would love to hear from you. Before Covid-19 we would have invited trustees in to see the hospice and meet our staff, but we are working on different ways for you to see for yourselves the difference that your charitable organisation can make to the children and families that rely on our services.”