With communities across the UK continuing to face severe levels of food insecurity, poverty and unemployment, it is critical that policymakers, businesses and individuals alike maintain support for local charities and community groups. We need to build on all we have learned from this year to ensure our communities not only survive but thrive; we must prioritise urgent support for existing grassroots causes.

Over 136,000 small charities and good causes across the UK have been at the heart of supporting our local communities since the start of the pandemic. These hyper-local causes are part of the fabric of our communities and continue to work tirelessly for people facing unprecedented challenges and all kinds of difficulties. It is their intimate local knowledge and established relationships within the community that enable them to react and respond quickly to what's needed. These small organisations have shown incredible resilience, innovation, and ingenuity throughout the year, with over 80% saying they had completely remodelled their services to meet people's needs at the same time as seeing a 106% increase in demand on pre-pandemic levels.

But local causes and small charities across the UK are stretched to breaking point. Research showed that charities faced a £10 billion funding gap in the second half of 2020, with hits to income expected to persist and small charities particularly vulnerable going into next year. As the ‘Levelling up our communities' report by Danny Kruger MP from October warns: ‘We risk losing some brilliant and essential organisations if we do not act deliberately and quickly'. To ensure that no community is left behind in the pandemic response and recovery, we all need to continue helping existing grassroots organisations. To achieve this, we need a focus on three key things:

Speed

Central government funding for charities has been slow to be distributed to organisations working at street level – with analysis suggesting that only 36% of organisations who had applied for grants had successfully received government funding by September.[1]

With two in five smaller charities expecting donations to be around 25% lower than usual this Christmas, it is even more critical to get urgent funds to small charities and local causes. Local causes who are providing lifeline services need immediate support within days – not weeks or months.

Local government can enable speed of support by being as flexible and efficient as possible in delivering funding that is administered through them. We need to remove friction, cut back on complexity and ensure that funding mechanisms are fit for purpose.

Size

In an environment where businesses, individuals and government all have increased strain on finances, this isn't about finding vast sums of new funding. It's about getting small but significant amounts – from as little as a few hundred pounds – to community causes quickly.

Corporate partners supporting the Neighbourly network of over 15,000 good causes have already demonstrated the power of small but fast funding. In March we launched our Community Fund together with Aldi, Lidl, M&S, Danone, Southern Co-op, Coca-Cola European Partners, Heineken and giffgaff. The fund channelled over £1.2 million worth of £400 micro-grants to more than 3,000 local causes across the UK and Ireland, who have used it to support more than 1 million people. As Jo Critch, manager of a women's charity in Great Yarmouth, told us: "It may not seem like much money, but micro-grants have been vital in enabling us to respond quickly to our increased demand."

Having achieved so much so fast, Neighbourly launched The Neighbourly Foundation in October. It uses the same principles as the Community Fund but with a permanent structure that responds to local need.

Scale

To achieve the scale of community support needed as we head into 2021, we need another collective effort that sees local and central government, businesses, individuals and community causes pulling together. The sense of community spirit and joint endeavour was a vital part of the pandemic response earlier in the year, and we can't afford to lose that.

Together, we can sustain and strengthen the hyper-local causes who form the backbone of our communities and ensure their long term health and wellbeing. 

Steve Butterworth is CEO of Neighbourly