Not for Profit

Gareth Owens, Dorset Community Foundation's Development Manager, and Ellie Maguire, Grants Manager, with a message for donors who helped raise £104,000 for its Surviving Winter campaign.
Published: March 6, 2023 | Updated: 6th March 2023
A Surviving Winter campaign has broken its 2022/23 target by raising more than £100,000 to keep Dorset’s elderly and vulnerable warm and safe.
The Dorset Community Foundation campaign raised £104,000 – £18,000 more than last year.
Now in its 13th year, it works with Citizens Advice to fund £200 fuel grants for pensioners and vulnerable people aged 50 and over living in fuel poverty.
Help with benefits and energy saving advice is also provided by the charity’s advisors.
This year’s campaign was bolstered by donations from Superior Seals in Ferndown and Sovereign Housing as well as the Dorset Echo and Bournemouth Echo’s Put In A Pound Appeal.
Tom Flood CBE, pictured left, the community foundation’s Chair of Trustees, said: “We are absolutely delighted by the amazing support we have received this year from Superior Seals, Sovereign Housing and readers of the Echo newspapers.
“The generosity shown by all of them – and everyone else who has donated – has pushed our total over our target and ensured that we have been able to make even more grants.
“This is so vital in a year that has seen even more people plunged into fuel poverty because of the rising energy prices and the cost of living crisis.
“With food inflation now at 17 per cent, and the cost of energy going through the roof, we are being told by our partners at Citizens Advice just how desperate a situation it is for people who are being forced to choose whether they eat or heat their homes.”
East Dorset and Purbeck Citizens Advice, which works with the foundation on behalf of branches in Dorset, said it has seen enquiries about help with fuel bills spike.
Nationally Citizens Advice said January was the highest month on record for people coming to it because they were unable to top up their pre-payment energy meter.
Katrina Ford, Business Development Manager, said: “I think it is fair to say we have not seen anything like this before and demand is not slowing.
“More than ever the funding from Surviving Winter is vitally important.”
Dorset Community Foundation, which was founded 22 years ago and supports hundreds of grassroots charities and voluntary groups across the county with grants every year, matches donors with causes they care about.
It is Dorset’s largest county-based funder.