THE LIMERICK charity Bóthar has seen a drop in income of 25-30 per cent between 2010 and 2011.
It is the second successive year that funding has fallen for a charity that receives 90 per cent of its income from public donations. Company records show that for the 12-month period until mid- 2010, Bóthar had taken in €7.7 million, down 8 per cent on the figure a year previously.
“Public donations are down and what we’ve found is that a lot of our donors have been in contact with us to say that they want to donate but that they simply don’t have the money,” according to the charity’s marketing manager Alison McNamara.
“The first thing we did was to cut down on our own spending. We have tried to cut down administration costs as much as possible and also Bóthar staff took a 10 per cent wage cut, we volunteered to take it.”
According to the company’s accounts, despite an increase in staff numbers from 25 to 27 between 2009 and 2010, the charity cut wage costs by €185,000. Administration costs have been cut to 3 per cent, covering the general running of the organisation and wages.
Asked about comments by Fine Gael MEP Seán Kelly this week, that Irish charities should merge to reduce overheads and increase overall aid effectiveness, Ms McNamara said that while Bóthar had worked with other charities in the past and were in regular alignment with others, theirs was a different type of aid than that provided by other Irish NGOs.
“The work we do is very specialised. We work in the area of development aid using livestock and environmental means. A lot of other leading Irish charities work in emergency aid.”
This differed from the long-term development work carried out by Bóthar. However, Bóthar was “always open to working together in the countries we are working in as we all have the same goal which is helping people”.
The charity conducts its appeals through direct mailing and emailing and radio ads and promotes awareness through its website and Facebook and Twitter platforms. Most of its marketing costs are met by funding provided by its sister charity Heifer International, which is based in America.
However, there has been an impact on how much money the charity is able to spend on campaigns to encourage fundraising.
“We have had to cut down on certain campaigns. For example, we decided not to do any TV ads this Christmas because it is an expensive way to communicate our message,” Ms McNamara said.
The cuts came at a price, she added. “In January we sit down and evaluate the different project proposals we receive. Unfortunately for the last few years we haven’t been able to fund any new projects. We’ve just been maintaining the ones that we had but we’ve also had to turn away a lot of new applications for support. It’s very difficult.”