Sing Your Heart Out
Singing workshops for mental wellbeing
Funders
To fund our programme of workshops in 5 venues for one year SYHO needs to raise around £45K
Thanks and Appreciation
Whatever the source and however little or much, we would like to thank all our generous donors past and present for their support. Without them SYHO would not be the thriving service it is today and would not be providing so many people with joy, friendship and help to cope in troubled times. For some it is literally a lifeline.
What does SYHO’s funding pay for?
SYHO’s largest expense is paying professional singing tutors to lead our workshops. Our tutors are self-employed and we believe in order to deliver an excellent service we should remunerate them well. One of our tutors is paid an additional fee for the role of Musical Director, with responsibility for organising, supporting, supervising and training the tutor team. We also pay the tutors’ travel expenses after a certain mileage.
Our next largest expense is venue hire for all our groups. We aim to provide the best possible venues to suit our needs within a reasonable budget.
SYHO has no paid employees. Our trustees and members of our local organising groups are all volunteers. However, we do reimburse their expenses incurred while carrying out their duties and responsibilities (not attendance at workshops).
Other more modest costs cover areas such as admin, publicity, fundraising, our website, training, banking and accountancy fees, fixed asset purchase and memberships e.g., for CAN (Community Action Norfolk) which advises and supports community groups and charities like ours. When our Covid management procedures allow, SYHO also needs funds to provide refreshments at workshops.
How do we get funds?
Volunteers within SYHO regularly decide on a plan to help maintain sufficient funding for one year, and make applications for targeted funds.
SYHO receives no public funding and makes no charge to people attending our workshops. We fund all our services from grants from independent organisations, donations, our fundraising activities and occasionally from the sale of outreach services to other organisations.
Voluntary donations according to means are gratefully collected anonymously at our workshops in donation boxes. Online donations by any well-wishers can be made via CAF Donate, a service provided by our bank (CAF Bank) for charities. Donors can go to our website (www.syho.org) and click on the Donations link to do this. Donors can also give donations to trustees if they wish, in return for a receipt. Donations will go into our main fund to benefit all groups, unless the donor specifically requests that their donation is only used for a group of their choice. We participate in the Gift Aid scheme which provides tax relief for charities on eligible donations. Donors to CAF Donate are invited to tick a box if they wish to Gift Aid their donation and are eligible. SYHO can claim Gift Aid on all the money collected in donation boxes at workshops, as long as no one donation exceeds £30.
SYHO groups organise various fundraising initiatives which augment our funds and also publicise our work. In recent years, these have included quizzes, table top sales, sponsored activities and raffles.
Grants from independent organisations
Historically, SYHO has been helped by many grant-giving organisations. Some are national organisations such as the National Lottery Fund or Comic Relief, whereas others specialise in supporting charitable groups in Norfolk (or Norfolk regions). All of them have specific criteria for the organisation to meet and usually expect a report on the progress and outcome of the grant project.
We have a very helpful partner in the Norfolk Community Foundation (NCF) which acts as a ‘go-between’ between grant-giving bodies and charitable groups like ours and sends out regular bulletins about available grants. We also receive grant information from CAN.
We have also received very welcome financial support from businesses over the years, such as from Archant Publishing and the Co-op. These awards often involve the public posting tokens in shops or collecting tokens from newspapers e.g., the EDP and Evening News.