Funding
We are often asked how we fund SCPA and how this interacts with the way that Christians Against verty (CAP) is funded. So, we thought it would be a good idea to set out the position for Church partners and supporters to see.
Suffolk Coastal Poverty Action (SCPA)
is a partnership between dozens of churches in East Suffolk. It is not a distinct charity but currently works under the auspices of SKC Church in Saxmundham, which is a registered charity (1171576). In addition to providing voluntary leadership support to SCPA, SKC also provides some administrative services to SCPA.
The SCPA financial resources are held in separate bank accounts and its accounts are in a partitioned section of the SKC Church’s own accounts. SCPA is therefore financially and largely operationally independent of SKC Church.
SCPA Costs
SCPA’s costs are split into core running costs and project costs (approximate 2025 budgeted costs):
● Core running costs include the salary and related costs of the Manager (£15,500),
● Subscriptions paid to CAP (£4,000),
● Staff and volunteers expenses – mainly transport(£4,000),
● other costs including contingency (£4,500)
Core costs total around £28,000 in the 2025 budget.
Project costs include:
● the cost of Life Skills courses run (£2,000),
● Money coachingcourses run (£2,800),
● Schools work undertaken (£8,000)
● and the SCPA Relief Fund(£3,600).
In 2025, Project costs are budgeted at £16,400 in total.
SCPA Income
SCPA (like CAP) does not charge anything to its clients. So, we have no income as such. The core costs of running SCPA are therefore met entirely by donations and there are four broad sources of those donations.
Grant-making trusts – this has historically been the largest single source of ffinancial support for SCPA, covering nearly half of our core costs. We make grant applications (historically with a high success rate) on a steady basis to manage the resources of SCPA.
Recent Trusts and other organisations supporting the work of SCPA include:
The Iken Trust,
The Suffolk Giving Fund,
The Brooks Fund,
The Diocese of St Edmundsbury & Ipswich Centenary Fund
(all administered by the Suffolk Community Foundation), the Ganzoni Trust and the Rope Trust.
Personal donations – this has accounted for about a fifth of our financial support.
Individual Christians 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 about a quarter of the support
A 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. Some make a regular monthly donation. 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 (volunteers are much more valuable for our work!). 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 – accounting for less than 10% of our financial support
Occasionally we will organise specific one-off fundraising events. Whilst the proceeds of these account for less than ten per cent of our financial support, if any church would like to organise such an event, we would gladly provide speaker support, seeing the increased awareness as being at least as important as the financial benefit.
Details of Grant-making Trusts and Partner Churches can be found here https://scpa.uk/
That has been our approach to funding over the eight years since we started active planning for SCPA. God has blessed us richly and we seek to ensure that our resources are sufficient to cover us at least six months into the future – a position that is true currently.
Our Project costs are covered in a different way. Whilst we seek to offer all our “project” activities on a continuous basis, In reality, they are offered when finance is available.
The funding for our Life Skills and Money Coaching services has generally come from Local Authority bodies, specifically financing these community activities. Our Schools-based work was carried out with a grant from Suffolk County Council in 2022-23 but no further funding was available in the next academic year and so our work in this area reduced significantly. However, a recent grant from the MSE Charity has enabled us to develop this aspect significantly and we are optimistic of further funding from this source to continue this important and highly-regarded project work.
Finally, our SCPA Relief Fund – a pool of money that we use to support those in extreme poverty and especially those facing emergency needs – has historically come primarily from individual supporters. Before it was largely withdrawn, a number of generous recipients of Winter Fuel Payments donated their payments to us to use to support those in greater need. We have, however, also received Local Authority funding for our Relief Fund and have just received a major grant from Suffolk Community Foundations’ Surviving Winter Appeal. (see full detailsof the SCPA Relief Fund here)[1]
The activity of funding the various streams of our work is therefore both complex and time-consuming and we would welcome greater volunteer involvement in this area. We have never (and nor do we intend to) engaged any form of paid fundraising.
If you are interested in CAP-UK’s position, you can read the full report here. CAP Annual Report