Since December 2022, OCF has awarded nearly £560k in cost-of-living grants to 77 charitable organisations, reaching almost 50,000 direct beneficiaries across the county.
Our donor report celebrates the impact of our cost-of-living grants, showcasing the absolutely crucial work of Oxfordshire’s dynamic and resourceful charitable sector. Grants went towards food and supplies, warm spaces, homeless support, sexual abuse support, family support hubs, mental health groups, education, enrichment activities, and many other services that people are relying on. Funding in 2022 focused on grantees providing immediate, practical support for essentials such as food and clothing. Funding in 2023 had a greater focus on long-term wellbeing, with grantees helping people to not only survive but thrive by building more sustainable habits.
We are extremely grateful for the generous support of our funding partners Oxfordshire County Council, as well as individual donors, businesses, universities/colleges, national funders and trusts, who together have made this positive impact on the community in Oxfordshire.
Charities are not just looking to manage their short-term crisis response, but are also thinking about long-term impacts and issues that are interrelated. More preventative solutions will take longer to create, and charities need investment to continue. Although a new price cap has been introduced from April 2024, energy bills still remain 49% higher than levels seen in 2020/21. Those on the lowest incomes are struggling with a burden of debt built up during the toughest times, and continue to be unable to pay for basic standard of living costs such as food or heating. Persistent debt and poverty also have a knock-on effect on other issues, such as wellbeing and education.
Our recently published research Oxfordshire Uncovered reveals that too many of Oxfordshire’s residents are still facing a daily struggle to provide the basics for living a stable and safe life – or what we have called in the report ‘unaffordable essentials’. To reflect this, we have decided to refresh the name of our Cost of Living Fund to be called the ‘Living Essentials Fund’ as we move forward.
We are committed to continuing to support local communities with the issues connected to unaffordable essentials, and plan to open a further round of grant funding in autumn 2024. We have around £40k in reserve for this, and would now like to raise at least a further £70k to support this ongoing vital funding for our dynamic local charitable sector.
We are now appealing to our networks of generous donors and funders to continue their support of the local community by making a donation to the Living Essentials Fund.