View a PDF of the Transforming Lives brochure.
Since the financial crash in 2008 the welfare budget has been cut severely and there are further cuts to come. The financing of the traditional L'Arche model, which included a suite of spiritual activities for both people with learning disabilities and assistants and an international dimension, can no longer be met by local and national government funding. Our challenge now is to create a new better model, that encourages new innovative thinking and practices some, which can be delivered voluntarily and others that can be delivered by donations.
There are additional challenges we must meet through fundraising: we need to grow our existing Communities, particularly the small ones, we need to develop new Communities and we need to improve and future proof many of our older buildings, we need to ensure we have the leadership capacity to deliver this growth and most importantly, throughout all of this change we need to ensure we continue to amplify the voices of people with learning disabilities and continue to explore new ways of ensuring they are at the centre of everything we do.
Finally, as members of an international federation we choose to contribute to the work and programmes of L’Arche international and the revenue funding of the 30 L’Arche Communities in developing economies.
In order to meet this range of needs across the Communities and centrally , and building on our Jubilee year, we have combined a range of capital and core costs into Transforming Lives – a 4 million pound appeal to be delivered over 3 years. We are at the early stages of this appeal but it is already bearing fruit. A small team of volunteers has formed a Development Council to help raise this money. So far the following people have agreed to be our appeal patrons:
Each Community will feel the benefit of this funding in a direct or indirect way.
We are currently in what fundraisers call the ‘private’ stage of this appeal, when we are talking to potential donors and trust funds on a one to one basis so you will not see any very obvious Transforming Lives branding.
The projects funded by the appeal are reviewed annually by the UK team. There will be opportunity within the appeal itself and in further appeals for Communities to bring forward new capital projects. (We need to stagger these in order to be able to deliver them within a reasonable time frame.)
While this work goes on we will also continue with our programme of 3 central appeal mailings a year. This is vital work as it generates funds which are mainly un-restricted and can therefore be spent on core costs. One of the long term aims of Transforming Lives is to increase the level of funds generated this way through the overall increase in fundraising activity.
In addition to this work, if a Community does not have a capital project under the Transforming Lives umbrella it can conduct a local appeal for up to 25K. (Any appeal for over 25K must be approved by the finance sub-committee.) The current Community Appeal will be featured on the new Community websites.