How does GVA do what it does? And how can you help?

04/05/2022

GVA’s Supported Volunteering Group (‘Community Spirit’) and our CEO on a community litter-pick

How does GVA do what it does?

Gosport Voluntary Action is a charitable organisation dependent on grants and donations to allow it to continue its good work across the whole of Gosport. Like other CVS organisations across the county, we receive this support in various ways.

Our main funding for our core activity is from The National Lottery. We also receive annual grants from both Gosport Borough Council and Hampshire County Council: these are voted on in their annual budget by members of the council. We also receive a small grant from the NHS each year to support the work we do across the health sector.

These grants reflect the activities we carry out in support of their work, including: managing the local Gosport Community Lottery, the Gosport Community Fund Grants and the Community Infrastructure Levy Grants, as well as delivering support to local community organisations; providing a community engagement team; delivering a volunteering brokerage service for local organisations, and delivering an adult supported volunteering group (called ‘Community Spirit‘).

We also represent the views of the Voluntary and Charity sector to other agencies, for example, Hampshire County Council; Gosport Borough Council’s (GBC) Local Children’s Partnership and Place Board (including Heritage Action Zone Boards); the Gosport Food Partnership; Gosport Older Person’s Forum; Fareham and Gosport Health and Wellbeing Forum; Gosport Primary Care Network, Hampshire and IOW CCG and Hampshire and IOW ICS.

We receive separate funding via grants for our Ramblers Wellbeing Walks from National Grid and Hampshire Cultural Trust, whilst our Close Encounters Befriending and Advocacy services are run in conjunction with Age UK Portsmouth, and are funded by The National Lottery Community Fund. Our Dustbusters and Mend and Tend services are both run as not-for-profit trading arms.

We do all this with just 21 part-time staff, working, on average, 405 hours per week between them.

GVA also relies on our many volunteers, without whose support it would be impossible to carry out much of the work and commitments. During 2020/21, we had more than188 volunteers working to support both core work and projects. These volunteers provided approximately 20,454 hours of support for GVA. Evaluated at the industry benchmark of £11 per hour, including on-costs, this contribution is worth approximately £224,994 to the wider Gosport community. This figure is slightly lower than previous years, due to a change in our routine business (related to COVID-19) and an increase in COVID-19 volunteering.

So how can you help us continue to do the great work we do with very limited resources?

• We can receive donations directly via our website: this can be via a one-off or regular donation. You can also Gift Aid your donation to bring in extra revenue from the Government. To make a donation via our website, please see: https://www.gva.org.uk/donate/
• You can also donate to GVA without spending extra money, thanks to both AmazonSmile and EasyFundraising, which allow you to donate a percentage of your money to Gosport Voluntary Action when shopping online (more detailed instructions for newcomers to these platforms will be shared soon!)

We hope the above is clear and helpful, but should you have any queries regarding GVA’s financial status and operations, please don’t hesitate to contact our CEO on chiefofficer@gva.org.uk, or our Finance Team on finance@gva.org.uk.

Our sincere thanks to all of our volunteers, staff, Trustees, members, community partners and supporters who help us to create a kinder, fairer and stronger community within the Borough of Gosport and beyond. Together, we continue to make a positive and long-lasting difference within our local neighbourhoods and communities, for the benefit of everyone. #BringingGosportTogether