The recent general election result heralds a change for the UK. The significant majority of seats won by Labour ends fourteen years of a Conservative Government, which has governed through unprecedented times including Covid and the war in Ukraine.
With Labour now in power, expectations are high. Economic growth, social cohesion and a return of politics to public service are just a few of Labour’s stated objectives. Keir Starmer has also made very public his desire to address many of the issues affecting people’s personal finances including the cost of our energy bills, the continued rising costs of food, protecting renters from no-fault evictions, improving help and support for unpaid carers, tackling the childcare crisis, and the increasing numbers of people in negative deficit.
From the MRBA’s perspective, a focus on these issues cannot come soon enough. We are constantly reminded of these very issues by the people who are contacting us in financial need. And, sadly, their numbers are growing. In the past year or so, we have provided financial support to roughly 50% more colleagues than in the previous twelve months. In terms of monetary value, we have given approximately £60,000 to colleagues in financial need, mainly in grants, in the same time period. This is almost triple the amount of financial support we gave the preceding twelve months. Of course, some of that increase is due to the rising cost of goods, services, rents and mortgages but it also reflects the growing complexity of needs that people have nowadays.
Because demand for our support is growing, and likely to continue for the foreseeable future, we will need to redouble our fundraising efforts, including raising our profile, increasing our awareness and encouraging our loyal and new supporters to donate more funds, where possible. That’s why we are on a mission to expand our Corporate Patron network and involve them more in our activities. This has already started to have an impact with Perspective joining us as a Corporate Patron, and another two companies in the midst of signing up. Hopefully, we will have more details to share with you in the coming months.
We are also hugely grateful to Ipsos, a Corporate Patron since 2010, for their continuing support of the MRBA. Their Marathon Month of June, was a huge success in raising awareness, and I had the pleasure of speaking at two webinars with their Fieldworkers and Telephone Interviewers. At the time of writing, we are waiting to hear the final amounts raised, but we understand it to be a significant sum of money that we can use to support research colleagues in need. My thanks to Maria Luther, Head of Field at Ipsos, and her team for all their support and hard work in making this happen.
We recognise that the MRBA has much to do to make a positive impact on those in our industry who need our help. We continue to work actively on extending and deepening our footprint in the industry to enhance our support for our industry colleagues in financial need.
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