Financial Precarity Survey

In May 2020, Cornwall VSF invited you to share about the challenges you were facing as you sought to sustain services and support across Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly. We commissioned Exeter University to create a short survey. 175 organisations responded. You told us that only 23% of the sector was operating as usual. Services supporting the young and the elderly were most adversely impacted – with one to one sessions, events and group activity most likely to have been suspended across the sector.  In light of this many voluntary organisations transformed and extended their service offer to help more people receive more support during the crisis.

We used this information to talk to local and national funders about your needs and together we were able to broker funding support through DEFRA and with COMF funding. This has yielded some fantastic results, supporting 47 projects across Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly to help over 1500 of the most disproportionately affected people. A roundup of the year with you was so inspiring.

As we begin to emerge out of the pandemic, we want to hear where you are now. We’ve redesigned the questions to build a robust understanding of which organisations and groups of beneficiaries have been disproportionately affected. We want to understand the impact of the end of the financial year on your finances, reserves and staff. We want to spot trends and hear your stories so that we can share them with funders and decision makers, to ensure as many of you as possible achieve sustainability.

Cornwall VSF will protect your anonymity when the results to the survey are shared. The data from this survey will be used to detail the structure, dynamics and impact of the voluntary, community and social enterprise sector in Cornwall and Isles of Scilly. We will share this data with you, funders and decision makers, to allocate support as best we can. We are #StrongerTogether