The Stanwick Group of Churches Charities Fund (SGCCF) is a separate bank account hald on behalf of the whole benefice to be used only for charitable purposes and it is kept separate so that it cannot easily be used for anything else.
Funding
The fund receives money from 3 main sources.
- When there are five Sundays in any month there will normally only be one service in the benefice that day and the collection money is given to the SGCCF.
- There is usually a coffee morning with stalls for cakes, raffles etc with the proceeds going to the Fund. For several years this was held in autumn b
ut in 2018 it could not be held so was postponed until March 2019. In 2020 it was held again in March shortly before the country went into lockdown due to Covid 18.
- The Community Christmas Card distributed with The Parish. The Parish is a parish and a community magazine an operates separately from the benefice and the various village organisations but aims to serve them all. Readers are invited to put a message in the Community Christmas Card in the October and November editions and make a donation instead of sending lots of Christmas cards. This is also seen as a more environmentally friendly way of passing on Christmas greetings.It also helps those who may have difficulty getting around to everyone to pass on seasonal greetings. The donations are then divided equally with half going to the SGCCF and the other half being distributed to secular charities by the magazine's administrators.
Distribution of the SGCCF
Early in the year the Treasurers and / or Churchwardens from the parishes along with the Rector and the Reader meet to see how much is in the Fund and decide which charities should benefit from it.
Donations are generally for sums of £200 or £250 and those who make the decisions try to ensure that a good spread of different causes is covered so that it is not all going to organisations with similar objectives. Usually four or five charities receive a donation and if there is still enough left then we try to respond to any specific appeals by the Disasters Emergency Committee which is a consortium of charities that work together when there is a major disaster needing an international response such as a major earthquake in a poor country. Unfortunately in recent years it has proved difficult to be able to respond to these appeals due to the lack of extra funds.