With ever diminishing government grants to the huge number of worthy household-name charities, particularly in the UK, there are increasing appeals to the public to donate to these good causes. It's only human to feel slightly under pressure from too many charities all with equal appeal, some of whom will employ professional fund-raisers with great success. MATCH cannot compete with any of these. If you had to choose between giving money to disabled children or to MATCH, we would understand your difficulty. However, please do consider how we would use the money you might be kind enough to give us.

Our main priority is to improve the support we offer to Members who suffer chronic, bereavementlike-symptoms and depression for many years.

An office, a paid full-time Administrator and 2 part-time staff would help us to support our Members more efficiently and effectively. All our Trustees and volunteers are unpaid. We have no office and run MATCH from our own homes. Some of us have full-time jobs and ‘fit’ MATCH into our lives where we can. As much as we should like to combine campaigning and supporting agendas, our limited resources prevent us doing both at the present time.

We’ve existed like this since 1979, paying for postage, newsletters, AGM costs, Committee’s small expenses by using Members’ subscriptions and their regular donations. Subscriptions are deliberately kept low (£6 to join, £10 to renew) to ensure that no one feels excluded on financial grounds.

Our new charitable status (granted in September 2006) has enabled us to Gift Aid all donations from now on (and others back-dated to September 2006). Being a charity may, in future, gain us access to some trust funds and grant-making organisations as well as some government funding where we ‘fit’ into their narrow requirements. However, acquiring fund-raising skills, applying the knowledge and correctly filling out applications to the appropriate organisation takes an immense amount of time.A great deal of competition exists for grants among many worthy or famous causes which we completely understand and accept.

Our first success in fund-raising came in August 2007 with a grant of £500 from The Eleanor Rathbone Charitable Fund for the development of this website. We are immensely grateful to them.

Here are just some of our Fund-Raising plans for 2008-2010. Our 30th anniversary occurs in 2009.

Regional Support Groups

• a. Build up and support Regional Groups
• b. Identify team leaders for training
• c. Send team leaders on appropriate training course
• d. Monitor and evaluate regularly

Telephone Help Line

• a. Consult membership on whether a Help Line would be used
• b. If positive, identify consultancy and evaluation service to assess costs of a Help Line
• c. Identify suitable volunteers from within the membership
• d. Attendance of volunteers on training course to maintain Help Line
• e. Monitor and evaluate regularly

Portrait Exhibition Mothers apart 2009

• a. Primary purpose is to raise public awareness of difficulties faced by mothers apart from their children
• b. Secondary purpose is to raise public awareness of the support offered by MATCH and to increase membership and donor base

Mental Health Support

• a. Commission research into long-term bereavement symptoms suffered by mothers apart
• b. Identify suitable support strategies for members affected by this bereavement
• c. Develop suitable courses/residential workshops for affected members
• d. Monitor and evaluate regularly

Ways to Donate Now