Cost of Living Crisis

What we’ve been doing.

Part of the Cost-of-Living Appeal has been asking the general public for donations that we can Match Fund on our giving platform The Good Exchange.

Over the past 12 months from a national perspective public charitable giving has been down. Our analysis shows that this is due to political and economic instability in the second half of 2022 alongside increased inflation and interest rates squeezing consumers budgets.

CAF UK Giving survey 2022 says:

“Around two thirds of people plan to cut back in the face of rising living costs and around one in eight say this will include charitable donations.  Just under two thirds of people (62%) say they plan to cut back on discretionary spending to help them manage their bills. Around one in eight people (13%) are considering cutting back on donations to charity in the next six months whilst one in 12 people (8%) said they had already chosen not to make a one-off donation.”

Against this backdrop of consumer caution,  we’ve been actively promoting the West Berkshire Cost of Living Fund across all media channels since September 2022. Social media posts across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn. Articles in our new Monthly Newsletter, Local newspapers, magazines and in conjunction with the council a leaflet drop to every house in the District. We’ve even been talking about it on BBC Radio Berkshire. Over £36k has so far been donated from the generosity of people from West Berkshire but we will continue to promote this as one of our key projects for 2023. As previously posted, the data seems to be showing that the cost-of-living crisis has not yet peaked.

If you have a social media account, we ask you to like and share the appeal so that can be put under as many noses as possible to maximise the fundraising and help those who are in most desperate need in our community.