Suffolk Coastal Debt Centre Finances
We are often asked how we fund the Debt Centre and how this interacts with the way that Christians Against Poverty (CAP) is funded. So, we thought it would be a good idea to set out the position for Church partners and supporters to see.
The Big picture
CAP is a national charity. It receives no statutory funding at all. It charges no fees to its clients. An extract from their 2021 Annual Report:
In 2020, our income grew by 7% to £15.4m (2019: £14.4m with 18% growth). Our main source of income continues to be donations from individuals and churches, which equates to £12.6m (2019: £10.9m) or 82% (2019: 76%) of our total income. Regular income, most of which was received on a monthly basis, was £9.1m (2019: £9m) which represents 59% (2019: 63%) of total income received. Regular giving from individuals (Life Changers) is our most important source of regular income and provides financial stability for the charity. In 2020, Life Changer income increased by 4% to £6.7m (2019: £6.6m), including associated Gift Aid. At the end of 2020, there were 29,633 Life Changers, each giving an average of £19 per month excluding Gift Aid. This is a £1 increase per Life Changer per month compared with 2019. One-off income increased by 17% to £6.3m (2019: £5.4m), primarily due to a £1.5m increase in donations from individuals. Included within this were two large donations of £1m and £400k, along with donations received through appeals being £550k greater than budgeted.
You can read the full report here.
The Suffolk Coastal Debt Centre (SCDC) is a partnership between dozens of churches in East Suffolk. It is not a distinct charity but works under the auspices of St John’s Church in Saxmundham, which is a registered charity. In addition to providing voluntary leadership support to the Debt Centre, St John’s also maintains the finances of the Debt Centre in a separate restricted fund within the Church’s own accounts.
SCDC Costs
The Debt Centre’s costs, including the cost of employing the Debt Centre Manager (DCM) and the annual fee that we pay to CAP amount to around £12,600.other In addition to this the Debt Centre’s costs are modest, totalling around £1,000 per annum (on average). These include the cost of IT hardware and software, telecommunications costs, travel costs and a variety of other incidentals.
The total cost of running the Debt Centre at the moment is therefore around £13,500 per annum.
SCDC Income
Like CAP itself, the Debt Centre does not charge anything to its clients. So, we have no income as such. The costs of running the Debt Centre are therefore met entirely by donations and there are four broad sources of those donations. Details of donors can be found here.
Grant-making trusts – this has been the largest single source of financial support for the Debt Centre, accounting for about two-thirds of the money that we have received so far. The DCM and I make grant applications (historically with a high success rate) on a steady basis to manage the resources of the Debt Centre.
Recent Trusts and other organisations supporting the work of the Debt Centre include: The Iken Trust, The Suffolk Giving Fund, The Diocese of St Edmundsbury & Ipswich Centenary Fund (all administered by the Suffolk Community Foundation), the Ganzoni Trust, the Public Health department of Suffolk County Council and the Magnox Fund (administered by East Suffolk District Council).
Personal donations – this has accounted for about a quarter of our financial support. Individual Christians, mostly but not exclusively members of St John’s Church have given one-off and recurring donations to support our work. We have not made specific appeals but the Holy Spirit seems to work in the hearts of Christians and we are blessed.
Partner Churches – accounting for less than a tenth of the support, a small number of partner churches across East Suffolk have blessed us with individual Sunday collections or as part of their own Church giving to missional activity. We have set great store by the fact that we have never made an appeal for funds from any of our many partner churches: we make a point of not asking for money. However, we are always very grateful when churches raise collections for us or include us in their own giving programmes. If that’s your church, thank you!
One-off events – occasionally we will organise specific one-off fundraising events. The proceeds of these account for no more than one or two per cent of our financial support though if other churches would like to organise such events, we would gladly provide speaker support, seeing the increased awareness as being at least as important as the financial benefit.
That has been our approach to funding over the three years since we started active planning for the Debt Centre. God has blessed us richly and our resources are sufficient to cover us for the rest of 2020 and into the early months of 2021.