OUR LOCKDOWN
As many of you will know Wendi Stevens sadly died in May. It is particularly cruel that someone of such generosity and energy should be taken at such a young age and with still so much to give. There follows below a tribute to Wendi by Sally Bowie who is a close friend of the family.
The last seven months have been spent re-organising the administration of Women in Philanthropy. The Community Foundation has supported us and helped us grow for the last six years for which we are grateful in so many ways.
Throughout this time the day-to-day administration of Women in Philanthropy and its Fund has been split between the Steering Group and the staff of the Community Foundation. It is clear that, as we have grown to over 70 members, the administration should be taken over by the Steering Group.
We hope that this will simplify the day to day communications and assure you that we will do our best to make the handover seamless……there may be some teething problems but we have been working on avoiding them by being on top of the changes. We don’t think these will impact on our members and want to make it quite clear that the WiP Fund and all financial transactions will be administered by the Community Foundation which has charitable status.
The most important change is that our email is now wip@wipfund.org.uk. PLEASE ADD IT TO YOUR CONTACTS so that we can continue to communicate with you by email. If you have any queries and want to get in touch please use the email or my telephone number 07767785438 if you wish to speak to me. We are no longer able to access any other emails. The email address is also be on the website www.wipfund.org. which is being updated by a DMU volunteer.
We will also be taking charge of our renewals, although Trust at the Community Foundation will deal with the finances and your money. Details of how to renew will follow with the individual renewal dates. I would urge you please to continue your vital support of struggling Leicester, Leicester and Rutland charities and to help keep them afloat.
The Steering Group has put a lot of thought into how we should distribute our available monies this year. We have decided to give the sum of £250 from each member to enable charities to keep their doors open and their work afloat. Grants will be administered through the Community Foundation’s Coronavirus Support Fund. We hope our members will approve of this decision as it will be available to all small charities in the area during these hard times. The remaining £250 will be added to the growing WiP Fund for investment.
As it is impossible to meet up at the moment we are hoping to arrange a few online interviews for members to watch, hopefully live, starting with Katy Green. Katy has really been at the coal face of the pandemic and we think she will be able to paint a picture of the difficulties it has presented for Charities in our area and how we might help. We hope this will be of interest to the membership and we thank you for your continued support.
Thank you for bearing with us, and we hope to see you very soon, in a more positive 2021.
Best wishes and stay well.
Caroline
Caroline Trace
