20 small charities win Weston Charity Awards
Melanie May | 14 June 2018 | News
Twenty small charities have each won £6,500 and a year’s strategic planning support as Weston Charity Awards winners.
The charities received their awards at an event at Thinktank Birmingham on Tuesday 12 June. The awards run by the Garfield Weston Foundation in partnership with Pilotlight celebrate and support frontline charities with incomes under £5 million in the North, Midlands and, for the first time in 2018, Wales – areas which the Foundation has identified as having greatest need.
Nearly 200 small charities applied to the Weston Charity Awards. Well over a third of applications came from charities focused on children and young people – an increase from just under a third in 2017. The 20 winners include: Endeavour Training, which works with disadvantaged young people in Sheffield, Carers Trust Tyne and Wear, Leicester LGBT+ Centre and Swansea Young Single Homeless Project.
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The directors of the 20 winning charities will be matched with teams of senior business leaders for a programme of mentoring and coaching, to strengthen their organisations and increase impact. They also receive £6,500 of unrestricted funding from the Garfield Weston Foundation to take part in the programme, as well as access to the advice and support of Pilotlight.
According to the Weston Charity Awards, applications revealed that small charities want support to maximise their impact and help more people, with this backed up by its own research among small charity leaders, which showed that three in five small to medium sized charities expect to support more service users in 2018 despite that fact most are not confident of income growth in that time.
Philippa Charles, Director of the Garfield Weston Foundation which established the Weston Charity Awards, said:
“Small charities have stepped up to deliver essential services in their communities and are extremely adept at being highly creative with limited resources. Their directors wear many hats as they juggle multiple roles. They need support.”
Gillian Murray, Chief Executive of Pilotlight, said:
“Large charities have been in the spotlight in recent months for the right and for the wrong reasons. Meanwhile, up and down the country small charities are quietly facing rising demands for their services. Our programme is an opportunity for the award winners to develop the skills they need to make the maximum impact, even as they are being stretched to capacity.”
About Melanie May
Melanie May is a journalist and copywriter specialising in writing both for and about the charity and marketing services sectors since 2001. She can be reached via thepurplepim.com.