Charity Employees Benevolent Fund
The charity says it will shut in September because it struggled to gain enough funding
The Charity Employees Benevolent Fund is to close in September after failing to secure sufficient support from the sector.
The charity was founded in 2003 and provides financial support and advice to charity workers, former charity workers and their families. CEBF had an income of £69,000 in 2011 and has helped around 260 families since it became fully operational in 2009.
In a statement, the charity said it had been forced to close after it struggled to generate enough donations from the charity sector: "CEBF’s trustees are dismayed that, with some notable exceptions, charities have not yet acknowledged the need for a benevolent fund of last resort for the estimated 650,000 people they employ.
"And yet the need is clear. CEBF’s beneficiaries include past and present employees of several large charities that have refused to support CEBF on the grounds that they look after their own staff."
The charity has one full-time employee who will be retained until the end of September. Any remaining balance from the fund will be distributed to a charity for the relief of poverty unless another organisation can be found to take over CEBF before 1 September.
Judith Rich, a trustee of CEBF, said that all existing commitments of support would be honoured, but the fund would not be accepting new applications for assistance. She added: "It’s deeply disappointing that for whatever reason the sector did not seem to feel that such a fund needed to exist."
In March, trustee Michael Brophy warned that CEBF faced closure unless the sector got behind the charity.
