As we reach our 7th Birthday we find ourselves facing a financial crisis. A victim of our own success? I can’t answer that. Over the years we have had our ups and downs. We have had great successes in winning funds from the Northern Rock Foundation, The Big Lottery and Children in Need. Many others have been persuaded to fund programmes and projects that have given us opportunities to deliver better services to you. Our own fundraising efforts, your support in sponsoring the Tyne Bridge Abseil and the Great North Run, and the many events friends and families have arranged have made a huge difference. We have operated each year on an income of around £115,000. So no mean feat to say we’ve managed to secure over £800,000!!

The Northern Rock have changed their funding criteria and we no longer qualify for grants. They were extremely supportive over a number of years and we thank them for that. The Big Lottery is open again in October. We will certainly be applying – but aware the demand on this pot of money is massive, our bid will have to be 1st Class to be in the running.

We will not be closing down overnight – we have project funding that is ring-fenced to deliver specific pieces of work and they will be completed over the next few months. We are sadly unable to retain Sue our office manager, administrator, support officer and many other things!!. We have had to give her redundancy notice. She will be leaving us at the end of September. Many of you have spoken to Sue over the years and benefited from her help and support. She has been a dedicated, loyal and crucial part of our team. We will miss her greatly.

We have sufficient funds to continue into early 2008, and in line with charity commission regulations we are obliged to plan for a worst case scenario.

We have secured a further 3 year funding from Children in Need to continue our work with young people – this is however restricted to that area of work alone and can not be used for our overhead costs or other staff members.

It is often said that the services we offer should be paid for by the NHS – after all we are doing much of their work and saving them lots of money into the bargain – again we’re met with the same problem – priority funding, too much demand – too little money.

Whilst we continue to apply for grants and pursue the Primary Care Trust Commissioners with grim determination, we know we must find other ways of funding what we do and we are working with Chester le Street Council for Voluntary Services to pursue these options such as; income generation, legacies and charity giving.

Trustees and staff have reviewed and revoked the introduction of membership fees. We feel it will disenfranchise many who simply do not have the means to pay.

However we are asking all who receive our newsletter, members and friends of ME to consider subscribing to ME North East via a regular monthly direct debit. We are asking for less than £1 per week (the price of a cup of tea or a local newspaper).

If we can secure a small regular income this way to pay our core costs; rent, telephone, newsletters and information leaflets, we can focus more on projects that will deliver direct help to our members.

We are doing our best to overcome this “glitch” and when we do recover and get back on track we’ll be celebrating.

Every little will help – please support us if you can.

Please contact the office for a Direct Debit form if you are interested or print off a copy here (Direct Debit form)