Inquiry into the Funding of Voluntary Sector Organisations in Wales

Rest Bay Lifeguard Club

My name is Hywel Davies and I am fundraising officer for Rest Bay Lifeguard Club, a voluntary Lifeguard Club based in South Wales. We have 200 members : 100 Nippers (aged 7 to 12), 50 Youth (aged 12 to 19) and 50 Seniors (19+).

We would like to provide Evidence on the Funding of Voluntary Organisations in Wales :

1. Ease or difficulty of obtaining funding from the Welsh Assembly Government or relevant national funding bodies.

There is a good variety of schemes.

2. Ease or difficulty in complying with constraints or conditions placed on funding.

It is very difficult to get funding for core activities, even if these activities have been grown through ongoing projects. For us we use no funds at all for wages, everyone gives their time freely but some of our core activities require modest sums of cash to allow them to continue (e.g. awards costs, pool hire etc.) If we could demonstrate that these activities have an ongoing public benefit and provide excellent value for money it would be great to be able to apply for help with core funding.

3. Issues related to the duration or timing of funding.

None

4. Any other comments relevant to the inquiry.

A number of organisations have been set up or set themselves out to take large sums and then administer a process to allocate this according to the overall priorities, I wonder if some of these have invented onerous application processes and updates to try to justify their existance e.g. one body requires original bank statements and audited accounts - as we have a building society account then providing bank statements is quite a challenge, another has a complex 1/4 return process and then complains of a high number of errors in the returns.

Hywel Davies