# Charities feel impact of recession

- Link: https://fundraising.co.uk/2008/12/15/charities-feel-impact-recession/
- Published: 2008-12-15T10:49:17+00:00
- Author: Paul Artherton

**The amount of funding available to Irish charities appears to be dwindling as 
the economy continues to deteriorate, according to Teresa Harrington, a partner 
with PricewaterhouseCoopers and leader of the firm’s charity and not-for-profit 
sector team. She told the Sunday Business Post that anecdotal evidence indicated
that there had a fall-off of up to 20 per cent in the amounts being raised by charities.**

Lorna Cronnelly, communications manager with the Dublin Simon Community, said it
is a very difficult climate to fundraise at the moment.

She said Simon was facing a shortfall on its fundraising target for this year, while
also anticipating a huge increase in demand for its services for the homeless in
the months ahead. Cronnelly said the charity had hoped to raise €4 million this 
year, but it was not looking likely that it would reach this target. She said a 
similar fundraising target would be set next year.

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While fundraising is proving difficult, Cronnelly said individuals’ donations were
holding up better than financial support from corporates.

## Some HNWI’s deferring giving

Niall O’Sullivan, head of fund development at the Community Foundation for Ireland(
CFI) said the financial crisis meant that some high-net worth individuals were deferring
plans to include philanthropy as part of their wealth management strategy. He said
the foundation was also seeing a sharp increase in requests for funding from charities.

O’Sullivan said the CFI’s grass roots grant programme, which gives between €500 
and €5,000 to small local charities and projects, was seven times oversubscribed
this year. He predicted at least a similar level of demand next year.

Last year, Revenue Commissionses refunded more than €25million to charities in relation
to qualifying donations of €46.8 million made by 80,974 individual PAYE donors. 
In the previous year, refunds of €28.5million were made, based on donations of €
58.4 million by 84,373 PAYE donors.

The consensus among charities is that 2009 will be a challenging year, but there
is still a sense of optimism that consumers will continue to dig deep in support
of worthy causes. Another change is on the horizon for the charity sector next year,
with the Charities Bill likely to be enacted in early 2009.

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