British Red Cross seeks 10,000 volunteers for local crises

The ‘community reserve volunteers’ would offer practical help in the event of a local calamity

The British Red Cross has launched a campaign to recruit 10,000 volunteers who would be able to help others if a crisis hit their local community.

The charity is hoping to recruit 10,000 “community reserve volunteers” by the end of 2019. They would be available to offer practical assistance initially in areas that have been affected by major flooding, including north Wales, Somerset and Cumbria.

But the Red Cross said it hoped the volunteers could help with the response to other major incidents in the UK, such as the Manchester and London terror attacks or the Grenfell Tower fire.

The charity said it hoped to have teams of potential volunteers in place in areas prone to flooding and weather-related emergencies by this winter.

Volunteers would be contacted by text message in the event of a major emergency in their local area.

Simon Lewis, head of crisis response for the British Red Cross, said the scheme was a way for people to help others in their communities by registering their willingness in advance.

“Through the events of this year, including the Manchester Arena and London Bridge attacks and the Grenfell Tower disaster, we’ve seen extraordinary compassion shown by ordinary people from local communities when a crisis hits,” he said.

“We would call upon people only at times of major crisis, which we hope won’t happen often. But when it does and extra help is needed, people will have the opportunity to do small things that make a big difference. There are many different ways of helping your community, but this is a new one.”

Volunteers, who must be over 18, can find out more information and sign up here.

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British Red Cross’s income falls by more than £23m

British Red Cross has seen its total income fall by £23.4m, including a £15.7m reduction in donations, the charity’s latest accounts show.

The accounts, which cover the year to 31 December 2016, show that total income at BRC fell by £23.4m to £251.7m.

This is in part due to a £15.7m reduction in donations to £104.5m, a figure that includes a £4.9m reduction in donations from regular givers to a total of £47.7m, the accounts show.

The charity also spent £3.2m on redundancy costs, compared with £800,000 in 2015. The accounts say this was due to changes in the way it organises and delivers services in the UK.

The charity said last year that its restructure could see more than 100 jobs lost but it hoped to save £10m a year.

Grant income fell by £10.2m to £23.3m, which reflected a £10.3m cut in funding from the Department for International Development, according to the accounts.

The accounts say this was due to a reduction in large-scale emergencies abroad.

Expenditure at the charity fell by £23.1m to £236.6m, including a £17.5m reduction in spending on international activities to an overall £59.2m.

Overall spending on charitable activities fell from £195m to £181.7m, and there was a £10.3m reduction in fundraising costs.

The accounts say that the charity expects reforms to fundraising in the charity sector to impact on its fundraising income in the next few years, but also say that the charity is “confident” it will accommodate those changes.

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The charity’s fundraising director, Mark Astarita, announced last month that he will join the consultancy Aldrich & Ward in November.

The charity also suspended part of its fundraising marketing activity at the start of 2016 “to ensure our fundraising practices complied with revised regulatory requirements”.

The accounts also say: “In addition, the markets for certain other fundraising activities, such as face-to-face fundraising, were subdued during the year. This meant our income and opportunities to invest fell in the year compared with 2015. We expect these operating circumstances to continue for the medium term.”

David Bernstein, chair of British Red Cross, said in his introduction to the accounts: “We continued to modernise our organisation in 2016. As part of this programme, we are reshaping our work in the UK.

“The aim is to create a more effective and efficient organisation so our teams can deliver better services and respond to the myriad of challenges that come their way. We cannot stand still. We need to move forward and change with the times.”

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Review sector’s response to Grenfell-like emergencies, says British Red Cross chief

Mike Adamson says the response to the fire was good, but some lessons still need to be learned; however, he rules out a domestic DEC

Mike Adamson, chief executive of the British Red Cross, has called for a review of the voluntary sector response to UK-based emergencies after the Grenfell Tower fire.

Adamson said that although there was a lot to celebrate about the sector’s response, coordination could be improved and it was important to reflect on what could be learned from such events.

But he rejected calls for a domestic equivalent of the Disasters Emergency Committee. He said that the DEC’s focus was on raising money, something that had not been a problem in the wake of Grenfell or recent terrorist attacks because of the public outpouring of support.

“We need to be looking at how we frame the way in which the voluntary sector responds in a whole variety of ways in these kind of emergencies,” Adamson said. “We need to work out what is inevitable in an emergency situation and what we need to learn from and get right.”

For example, he said, the immediate aftermath of an event such as the Grenfell fire or a terrorist attack was always likely to be chaotic.

But he said responding to the fire had been much more complex even than the recent terrorist attacks, because of the need to support community recovery as well as the immediately affected victims.

A review, Adamson said, should look at “creating the mechanisms that allow coordination, fundraising and funding distribution for the medium term”.

He said: “We want to be engaging with government about what kind of arrangements we have in place for the future, for a terrorist attack or other emergency. How much do you have as a standing fund? How much do you set aside for immediately affected victims and how much do use for community recovery and development?”

Since the Grenfell fire, a number of people have called for a domestic equivalent of the DEC, a coalition of 13 charities that coordinates its members’ responses and fundraising efforts for overseas disasters.

Last month, the Charity Commission said it was in talks with a number of charities about a more coordinated response to disasters.

Adamson said the commission had been playing a helpful low-key coordination role with charities and community groups that were responding to Grenfell, but he did not believe a domestic DEC was the answer.

“The DEC raises money in partnership with the broadcasters for huge emergencies overseas affecting hundreds of thousands of people,” he said.

“There’s no shortage of money in the response here, but there are lots of different funds and what I think we need here is some improvements to the coordination of fundraising and funding distribution.”

But he said that any review and a wider debate about society’s response to Grenfell should happen in parallel with the continuing relief effort on the ground.

A commission spokeswoman said the regulator agreed there were lessons to be learned from the sector’s response to the fire and it would be working with charities to coordinate their responses in the future.

“In the short term, however, our priority is to help ensure those affected by the fire at Grenfell Tower know how to access the charitable support that is available to them,” she said. “We have supported and welcomed the collaborative approach that the key funders have taken in a complex environment.

“As the largest and most experienced charity on the ground in west London, the British Red Cross has a key role to play in making sure that happens.”

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