Funder Spotlight: Gillian Stevenson Trust – ‘Caring Matters’

The Gillian Stevenson Charitable Trust CIO was set up in 2021 in honour of their ‘lovely mum’ Gillian.

“Mum spent many years as a primary school teacher and, because of her kind and caring nature, always had a real affinity with children, whether that be those in her class, our childhood friends or just those she came across while out and about! Although we sadly lost our mum to kidney cancer in 1995, her approach to life of treating all people with kindness and compassion is something that we, her family, have learned by example and try to continue to do today. One way we have chosen to do this is by providing funding to charities that show this same kindness and compassion and help them carry on making a difference to the people that they work with.” www.gillianstevensontrust.org

Gillian’s daughter Joy who manages the trust with her family first came to visit Headway Leicester in the Spring of 2023 and immediately bonded with our staff and members alike. The relationship Joy has built with us facilitates projects that we may not have had the courage to consider in these financially difficult times. Our Day Service has lit up again with funding for Art Therapy, Woodwork Sessions, Pottery and frankly a greater sense of optimism all around.

“One of the greatest challenges in fundraising beyond the complexity of communicating all you do and why you do it in a funding application is conveying enough feeling for the individual at the end of the application to care. It is so common to receive a default response stating that your application was unsuccessful due to a high number of applicants and no feedback is available regarding the huge time and effort you undoubtedly put it into it and the ‘facelessness’ of this process is so demoralising. Working in the charity sector is personal. It is personal to the paid staff, to the volunteer staff, to the community, to the beneficiaries and in an ideal world it would be personal to all the funders too. When Joy visited us, she stayed for half the day, she talked with everyone, later in the year she attended our annual fundraising ball and folded up raffle tickets for us – every interaction with her and the trust has been and remains personal. We are very grateful to the Gillian Stevenson Trust for their financial support but most sincerely we are more grateful for the personal investment, for their time and for caring!” Tor Berry Fundraiser @ Headway Leicester