The Purfleet Trust is a homeless charity in King’s Lynn which has recently celebrated its 30th birthday. In that time, they have supported thousands of local people experiencing homelessness across their local community. They recently joined easyfundraising and in their first few months have raised just shy of £100. We spoke to Kieran, their digital marketing apprentice, to learn a bit more about the charity and how the funding they raise makes a difference.
Tell us about The Purfleet Trust
The Purfleet Trust was set up to support people experiencing homelessness in King’s Lynn and West Norfolk back in 1993. We provide housing, benefits and employment advice, as well as essential services like hot meals, showers, counselling, a visiting nurse and more. A few years ago we launched our Training Houses which provide 30 rooms in HMO properties (multiple occupancy), designed to prepare people for living in self-contained or shared accommodation of their own in the future and break the cycle of homelessness.
We work in partnership with a number of other organisations to give service users access to the right resources. From the JobCentre to large national charities like Crisis and Shelter.
Why does the trust need to fundraise?
Our day centre in King’s Lynn sees us support around 500 people every year. These individuals may be facing eviction, sofa surfing, sleeping in their car, or be street homeless and rough sleeping. We support them to get the help they need through our range of services – from resources, to counselling, to our workshops and social activities like walking groups. We also provide hot breakfasts and lunches every day and these meals are a staple for our service users. The annual bills for providing such a service are not small and we rely on donations to be able to support the community.
Why did you join easyfundraising?
Easyfundraising means that our supporters can help us to provide our services everyday just by shopping online. We are now getting the word out to our supporters and they are encouraged that they can help us without the need to give from their own pocket. The platform make it so simple for our community to help us continue. Using Easyfundraising means that we can raise vital funds year round, which means we can support our visitors year round too.
How has the money raised via easyfundraising helped so far?
We have been able to continue to provide meals to our service users. We have been able to purchase healthy ingredients that means that they can have 2 meals every day from The Purfleet Trust throughout the summer of 2024.
Is there something in particular you are raising towards now?
We continue to raise money to provide our meals at our day centre. This is a cost for us but is essential as this is what our service users need. Being able to provide meals and services means that we can provide holistic, wraparound support to help people move forward on a positive, sustainable pathway out of homelessness and change their lives. In summer, it is difficult for homelessness charities, but the need does not go away.
How do you encourage other supporters to sign up in support?
We have been diversifying our promotion of easyfundraising, using social media platforms and our email newsletter. We have also put banners on the homepage of our website so that it is clear for our supporters and it links them directly to our cause page. We have also attended a lot of events in the community and used easyfundraising’s printable resources to promote this new way of helping us. We have just over 30 active supporters behind us at the moment, and would welcome more!
What advice would you give to other causes using easyfundraising?
Be consistent in your promotion – try to keep reminding people of the benefits to the charity and what raising money through the platform can do on the ground with your work. We like to share how we are able to change peoples’ lives through funds raised by our supporters.
We have also found the printable resources useful at events and we are then able to talk to our supporters in person and explain how the platform works and how they can get started straight away.
How you can support The Purfleet Trust
The Purfleet Trust is providing a crucial service for the local homeless community. Giving them access to all the help they need, both physical and mental, to improve their situation. If you would like to support their work every time you shop online, you can support their cause here.
If you work for or support a charity or cause not currently registered with easyfundraising, register it for free here.
If you need to access the services provided by The Purfleet Trust, visit their website here.
