It's 4am

It’s 4am.

I’m lying in bed in a caravan belonging to my boyfriend’s mother. My children are soundly asleep in the next rooms and I, not for the first time, have just decided that killing myself in the hope that my death would raise funds for my charity isn’t a good idea. It would traumatise my children.  As would simply getting in the car and disappearing, which is arguably more difficult anyway, what with phone tracking, cctv and everywhere only taking cards. I casually wonder what I’d do if I didn’t have my son and daughter to consider and quickly shut those thoughts down - too dark. 

It’s May half term 2023, and we’re meant to be away for a few days enjoying the British seaside. Winchelsea Sands caravan park has everything you’d imagine: a clubhouse with questionable but wholesome entertainment, a freezing outdoor pool and a play park which has seen better days.A man who lives on the site plays the banjo on his balcony every evening, we call him Banjo Bob, I have no idea what his name actually is. We love it.

There is a beautiful beach with an ice cream van, and the seafood shack down the road in Dungeness is second to none - despite the strange backdrop of disused nuclear power plant and desolate coast line. It feels like it has everything... However, what this beautiful corner of East Sussex probably doesn’t have, is many small charity CEO’s lying awake at night, wondering if it would be beneficial for their organisation if they were dead. 

I don’t want to die, just to be clear. I am just out of ideas and those thoughts tiptoe across my mind as I scan the options. I am out of creative ways to beg for the money that is so desperately needed by the families we support.

My boyfriend is asleep next to me. Lately, when he’s asked if I’m ok my answer has simply been ‘no’. He doesn’t ask why any more, he knows. I am absolutely crushed with worry. The charity I work for, First Days, helps families who are struggling financially. The last 3 years has seen the charity grow rapidly in response to ever growing demand. We have encountered crisis after crisis in recent years. Covid and then the Ukrainian refugee crisis brought huge surges in demand but also large amounts of government funding to meet that demand. The cost of living crisis, however, has left us feeling like we’ve been abandoned. At the time when we are needed the most, we have been left, forgotten. There’s no central government fund, no additional support for charities and no recognition of the work we are all doing to be the safety net in our communities. Not even a doorstep clap.

I saw this coming. I have been very vocal about it. It was clear that the cost of living crisis was something that charities were not going to be supported through. So, whilst keeping the wheels on the organisation I have also been working exceptionally long hours to prepare us for applying for the sort of huge funding grants that we need to be sustainable. It’s a long process and I fear we are out of time, just when I can see the finish line. It’s a strange juxtaposition: as an organisation we are in the best shape we’ve ever been, we have an exceptional team and the work we are doing is meaningful and changing lives. I am so proud and pleased that we’re able to do all this important work in people’s lives and I’m terrified that it’s going to have to stop. 

When I wake up most nights at 3am I have to actively tell my brain not to think about work. This morning it didn’t work. I made a few notes on my phone of things I’d forgotten to do and then the worry smashed down, enveloping me. I have a recurring dream that I’m standing with my back to a sea wall and huge waves are rolling in, one on top of the other and crashing over me. It’s strange because I don’t feel afraid in the dream, it’s just something that is happening to me until the last wave comes. A huge tidal wave that brings thick, black darkness and I wake with a start. No need for a psychologist to analyse the meaning of that one. 

The fear is real: a fear that we’re running out of money and we’re going to have to stop helping people. A fear that my employees will lose their jobs - employees who are parents who need our support too, who rely on us for school uniforms and referrals to the foodbank. A fear that I’m just not able to get us through this battle for funds. 

Something has to change, that much is clear. I love my job, ordinarily. I love the charity sector too, but the stress is too much and I deserve better than those dark thoughts. Perhaps the time has come to move on to something different. Just, I can’t leave yet. I need to get the organisation over this financial hurdle and onto a safe footing. I feel that I owe it to the families we support. 

We’ve applied for hundreds of thousands of pounds of grant funding. We wait for responses, and I have some hope left that something will come of it, however that hope is dwindling. 

I’ve lost count of the funding applications that have come back offering a tiny proportion of what we’ve applied for - telling us that they’re over subscribed and it’s all the money they have. I understand this, but our costs haven’t changed. They’ve gone up, of course, along with the demand for our work. There are Double the number of families who need our help compared to last year. It keeps rising and the situations that parents are in get more and more bleak. 

Whilst I feel alone, right now, at 5am as I listen to the seagulls on the roof and google what time the co-op opens, I know I am not. I recently tweeted about the state of the small charity sector and I had hundreds of replies and DMs. 

Everyone feels the same: desperately hopeless. Abandoned. On our knees but still carrying on. Loving our work but so fearful that it’s going to have to stop. A deep dedication to the people our work helps. A commitment to doing good and keeping on going despite everything. A collective knowledge that it’s not personal failure that has got so many organisations here but a funding system that is, with the exception of a few funders, outdated, paternalistic and ego driven. A government who simply will not adequately fund the services that are so desperately needed in our communities. 

The big funding bids are in. I am bursting with pride at what they contain: a story of a brilliant organisation that is changing lives for families in hardship in our community by restoring choice, empowering them and giving them dignity. Giving families options and hope where there was none. I just hope more funders see it the way we do and we get through this. 

But what in the meantime? Do we have to turn to the public?

The public who are cash strapped and feeling abandoned by the government too? We have no choice. We go cap in hand and beg for a fiver... A pound... Anything. 

If we don’t get some money in the bank soon it’s all over for us as a charity and then what will happen to the thousands of children who rely on us for food, shoes and beds? 

It’s 5:30am now and I will try to sneak out of the caravan without waking anyone. I’m thinking about sitting in the car on my laptop and doing some work for a couple of hours until that Co-op opens and I can get a coffee and go and watch the sea. I won’t be driving off into the abyss, not today. Today I will, like so many others in my situation, keep going, desperately hoping that today will be the day things will look up.