Avon Wildlife Trust has made the difficult decision to reduce their staff team by 20% to help mitigate the potentially devastating impact of coronavirus on the charity’s finances as income is estimated to drop by up to £1 million in this year alone.
For Avon Wildlife Trust, the lockdown period has meant cancelled events and volunteering activities and furloughing many of their staff and membership recruiters. This has had a huge impact on the Trust’s finances as most of the charity’s operations have been shut down from April to July.
We estimate a drop in income of up to £1 million in this year alone, resulting in potential losses of £280,000.
The Trust has done everything it can to combat this. As well as using the Government’s furlough scheme, we have accessed a multitude of grants and loans and experienced extreme generosity from our members and donors throughout a very uncertain time. However, these estimated losses and added financial pressure caused by ash dieback has meant greater cuts have needed to be made. After a long period of consultancy, we have made the very difficult decision to reduce our staff team by 20%, resulting in redundancies and the loss of some talented, passionate, and much-loved colleagues.
