A CHARITY which provides lunch clubs across the dale will be eating into its reserves to keep going this year after losing its major funder.
National Lottery funding for the Association of Teesdale Day Clubs, which provides weekly lunches for older people at village halls, ended in February, its annual meeting heard last week.
Treasurer Annie Dolphin told members that the association had £174,000 in the bank which would see it through 2020 and partly into the following year.
Part of the association’s income is derived from interest on the cash in the bank, she said.
Ms Dolphin added: “As this year goes on and on that will get less and less, because we will be eating into our reserves.
“So, you can see we need to be very actively looking for grant funding now and that is what we are doing.”
She said trustees, who had foreseen the current challenges in July 2017, had taken advice and done a lot of work to come up with solutions and strategies.
This included appointing a strategic manager, in the form of Andrea Hobbs.
Ms Dolphin said: “Andrea is doing a fantastic job in this very complicated situation we are in by getting lots of different funds from lots of different places to ensure that we can continue.”
She revealed that although there was no chance of getting another major contribution from the Lottery, a bid for a smaller amount had been made. She added that the association should know by the end of the month if it had made it through the first round of the bid.
Ms Hobbs said cash requests had also been made to Newcastle Building Society and the Garfield Weston and James Knott foundations, among others, amounting to £40,000.
She added: “My next stage is to work on larger funders but there are only really two or three large funders that we can approach.”
The treasurer said the trustees were considering registering as a charity incorporated organisation (CIO) which would allow them to apply for a large grant from the Power To Change Trust.
Ms Dolphin concluded: “So, we are in a very good position at the moment to be able to move forward and to keep going.”
