I HAVE worked for an educational charity that folded due to lack of sustainable funding.

If you are to continue as a charity your trustees have to be satisfied that funding can be ongoing and that the bank balance stays above a certain level that allows for staff redundancy.

More and more the time over which a grant can be given has reduced from three years to one year. Grants have also changed from running cost grants to project grants, some not allowing for staff salaries.

This has made it harder and harder for charities to plan ahead and to employ new staff.

If a council grant has to be applied for every year, a member of staff must go through the time consuming task of making this application and researching what the council is making a priority each year.

This takes a member of staff that is usually doing the work the charity is set up for away from that work in order to write funding applications.

Towards the end of my employment with my charity I was spending more than 50 per cent of my time writing funding applications and reporting back to funders.

What grant givers need to realise is that if they want their money to be spent efficiently, awarding it for a longer period enables a charity to plan, to employ the right people for the right period of time, to actually concentrate on the important work that they do and not constantly be living in fear of the charity closing if the next grant is rejected.

I feel for the staff of Home Start and the families that will have to look elsewhere for help.

My charity dealt with community cohesion between schools and their locality and the wider world. The work seems quite important in these days of terrorism and radicalisation but grants became harder and harder to come by as budgets were cut in this area.

Sharon Colpman, Goodworth Clatford, Ex-Centre for Global Awareness staff member