Dear Colleagues,
Financially, these are challenging times. The Council has announced that it has reduced the amount it needs to save over the next two years from £32.6 million to £17.2 million by 2026/2027 and that it has set a balanced budget going forward.
Priorities include adult social care, services for children, and special education needs and disabilities services. The VCSEF sector often responds to need or demand and mirrors this provision through stand alone or complementary services for people locally, in neighbourhoods and wards. This is often provided through, for example, setting up a charity, fundraising, enterprise initiatives, applications for grant funding and volunteering.
The VCSEF sector in Wolverhampton is diverse with organisations who have decades of history in the city, many who are newly formed and just starting, with the majority being in between.
We aim to stay close to the sector, particularly as an Infrastructure Organisation, not only to keep the sector up to date and informed with what we are doing, with whom, where and why but also regarding national, regional and local issues which may all impact our sector.
We do this through several channels including our face-to-face work and projects, WVCA website, newsletter, mailshots and social media. However, really reaching everyone is never an easy task and is a constant work in progress.
This week we held our Annual General Meeting (AGM) for the financial year 2023-2024 where we shared the broad range of projects and work which we have led on or have worked on collaboratively with partners.
At the end of 2024 we forward funded £244,000 to the Wolverhampton VCSEF sector through projects including Holistic Opportunities Preventing Exclusion (HOPE), Social Enterprise Boost Fund and the St. Peter’s Project to name but a few.
We have managed to surpass that amount this year having forward funded approximately £350,000 to the Wolverhampton VCSEF sector.
You can access WVCA’s Annual Report for 23/24 here.
Thank you,
Sharon Nanan-Sen
Chief Executive Officer