LGBT domestic abuse charity Broken Rainbow just days away from closure

Broken Rainbow, the LGBT domestic abuse charity, is days away from closure due to a cash shortage. If the organisation is to continue operations beyond Friday (April 8), it needs to raise £25,000.

While Broken Rainbow has secured £240,000 in grants for the next financial year, £120,000 of this comes directly from the Home Office and the charity has been given no clear indication as to when this will be paid into its accounts.

It is currently operating with a deficit of £35,000 and needs to provide its creditors with £25,000 by Friday.

Speaking exclusively to Attitude, Jo Harvey Barringer, chief executive officer at Broken Rainbow UK said, “We’re in a situation that we have no money in the bank, it’s not that we’re not a sustainable organisation.

“The delay from the government has put us in this position. Our contract with the home office says that we get paid in advance, therefore we should have had money in our accounts as of the 1st of April and the contract and agreed signed before then, but we don’t even have the contract yet we just have the letter saying we are going to fund you.”

jo image for website

Broken Rainbow runs a national helpline providing confidential support to LGBT people experiencing domestic violence. It currently employs 15 people, 10 of which operate the charity’s helpline. Last year it supported over 10,000 people, 2,500 more than it had the previous year.

One in four LGBT people are expected to experience domestic violence in their lifetime. Though some of those affected may turn to universal domestic abuse charities for support, others don’t feel comfortable doing so, for fear of discrimination, a lack of understanding of the LGBT issues and other reasons.

But despite being the UK’s only national LGBT domestic abuse charity, the Home Office didn’t decide whether to make grants available to it until February, a decision which cost the charity money.

“We didn’t hear until towards the end of February that the Home Office were going to fund us,” says Barringer. “We had another donor in the pipeline but because they thought viability was under question because the home office hadn’t confirmed we lost them.

“To have government grants in place in such a small organisation is always a benefit for other funders that we go to, or to people that might want to make a significant donation to us, because they see if a government or a local authority are funding us then we’re viable to continue. When there’s doubt, if that funding is going to continue forward, it then puts into question whether we’re sustainable and whether we are a good risk for them to put money into us.”

Despite alerting the Home Office about the immediacy of the situation, there is still no indication as to when the funds will be made available.

HOME OFFICE

“Under charity law we shouldn’t be working under the current position we’re in,” says Barringer. “The minute we can’t meet staff salary, and our debt, and meet what our creditors demand, we need to consider whether we’re viable or not. And that is a really ludicrous position to be in, because we actually know we’ve got £65,000 due in our bank account this month.

“We would have to seriously consider shutting the organisation if we couldn’t meet the deficit before those grant payments are made to us.”

This afternoon, in a letter published below, SNP MP Stewart McDonald wrote to the Home Secretary Theresa May, asking that resources are “released immediately” to support a charity that provides “vital services and employment.”

STEWART MCDONALD LETTER

Cuts to local council budgets and the current financial climate have placed LGBT charities in particular under increasing pressure, with many having to compete with much larger, universal charities for funding.

Earlier this year PACE, the London-based LGBT+ mental health charity ceased operations after it was unable to secure adequate funding. Formed in 1985, for 31 years the charity offered a variety of support services to vulnerable LGBT people, including advocacy work, counselling and mental health support.

It’s a fate Broken Rainbow hope to avoid on Friday. “I need to talk to my board and we need to make a decision about whether to stay open,” says Barringer. “They’re aware of the situation and they’re aware we’re running on deficit at the moment but it is about how quickly we can get those grants into place…and how much leeway we can get from the charities commission with regards to being seen as viable. We’ve been doing a lot of work over the last week or so around looking at other options and I’m hoping there’s potential that some of those options will be forthcoming.”

Donations to Broken Rainbow can be made at brokenrainbow.org.uk/supporters/donate.

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