Running a charity during a global pandemic

We speak to Ryan Heal CEO of Rockinghorse Children’s Charity.

“7pm – March 23rd 2020 – Lockdown. Running a charity has always been a balance between fundraising and over asking with the latter running the risk of alienating your market with untimely, insensitive asks. This was different…Within 4 days of the lockdown being introduced, ALL of our fundraising events had been postponed or cancelled and we were facing a funding crisis never before seen in over 50 years of Rockinghorse.

During my tenure, I’ve always professed that its crucially important for charities to operate as businesses. This doesn’t necessarily have to affect your market profile, your cause or your engagement with supporters but it does make you more aware of your opportunities and threats just as you would see in the commercial world. I immediately took the decision to keep all staff on and not furlough, this enabled us to work with what market we had left and embark on a fundraising “push” that saw us achieve over £150,000 across April, May & June. As per the rules of the furlough scheme, none of our team would have been able to carry out any fundraising at all and the impact would have been felt far more keenly. I appreciate that Rockinghorse bucked the trend in this sense (locally) but it felt right to me that we were present in the market, engaging with our supporters that remained so keen to help and to maintain our support of those in our community that need our help the most, Covid or no Covid.

Continuing to operate during the initial phases of the pandemic enabled us to get creative and launch many virtual fundraising initiatives. My team were / are utterly inspiring during this period and they were an honour to lead at a time of crisis. However, as is always the case, we completely rely on the goodwill of our supporters to continue our work. Unfortunately, we received no government support. Upon the Chancellors announcement on the 8th April that there would be a £750M “pot” available to the charity sector, many quickly commented that it was a drop in the ocean compared to the cliff edge the sector faced. Our supporters truly stepped up. From our corporate partners to our challenge event participants to our major donors and event organisers, the Rockinghorse family genuinely steered us through the first phase of this difficult period with a united sense of “we shall overcome!”

Our Coronavirus related projects included equipment; resource and innovative research into Covid-19 amongst teenagers in the region. This is groundbreaking research that will have a major bearing on the future of how the virus is understood in the future. We were able to continue to support our key beneficiaries including the Royal Alexandra Children’s Hospital and The Trevor Mann Baby Unit at this time, alongside supporting our many County wide beneficiaries including Chalkhill – the only mental health unit in Sussex.

So, thank you to everyone that hosted an online quiz; ran a virtual 5k; set up an online auction or who just simply made a donation. We will be forever grateful. Now for the shameless plug as unfortunately we are by no means out of the woods. All events that had originally been postponed to the Autumn are now having to be pushed back into 2021 creating a second black hole of funding for the Autumn / Winter. Our own second wave. I personally and respectfully invite you to consider Rockinghorse for any charitable partnerships you are considering and would welcome the opportunity to speak to any Sussex business about who we are and what we do.”