How Age UK Bury uses Huggg to Disburse Household Support Funds (HSF)
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Age UK Bury is a small organisation with a big reach. They support older people across six towns and their outlying areas with befriending services, a handyperson service, information and advice services and a plethora of activities, both online and in-person.
To say that Age UK transforms live in communities it supports is an understatement. In a cost of living crisis, these services are a lifeline to older people.
The charity works in partnership with national charity, Age UK and other Age UKs in Greater Manchester. However, Age UK Bury raise their own funds. In normal times, Age UK Bury raises money from its charity shops and café sales. They run paid activities at their Jubilee Centre and they rely on the generosity of people who make donations to support their work.
In this way, Age UK Bury are like many charities; combining income streams from a variety of sources, most of them regular and forecasted. But this year, Age UK Bury have received a new source of funding that has made the world of difference to the older people they support.
It began when local authority Bury Council approached Age UK Bury to disburse a significant portion of their Household Support Fund (HSF) that was earmarked to support pensioners.
The charity knew they would have to make the most of this unexpected amount; they would need a transparent, agile way to get support to the right people with groceries or energy.
Often, government funding such as HSF must be spent quickly or it will be lost, and this was no exception. Age UK Bury knew that they had only weeks to disburse the money to all eligible pensioners, and they needed to make sure it was spent in the way it was intended, on groceries.
Office manager at Age UK Bury, Michelle Goodwin, could see that buying and tracking supermarket vouchers for so many people, plus understanding whether recipients had redeemed the vouchers, could easily become an administrative nightmare.
They needed a way to do this with speed and transparency – and in a way that was simple for their demographic to use.
Michelle chose to use Huggg to send grocery vouchers, so that she could run the task of managing funds on a simple system, with transparency and accountability. She found she could send hundreds of grocery vouchers without losing track - which in turn made it easy for Michelle to report the results. Money from non-redeemed vouchers went back into the pot to use elsewhere.
Up to £100 in grocery vouchers were sent, via Huggg, to all the eligible pensioners in the area, to spend at their choice of supermarket. This choice was essential because the recipients could choose the supermarket closest to them, such as Tesco, Sainsbury’s or Aldi (among others) – so they could choose for convenience or personal taste.
Because they had this choice, Age UK Bury were able to give their older people support without taking away their dignity and choice.
The first disbursement of HSF money for pensioners was so successful that when Bury Council received another increment of the discretionary Household Support Fund, they gave Age UK Bury another significant amount to disburse to those pensioners in the greatest need.
Raising funds is a challenge for every charity, but when it is simple for them to manage, it makes it simple for local authorities to partner with charities to disburse government support.
Find out more about Huggg and how we can help you with disbursing vouchers to those in need
