Raise Your Voice with the 'Stronger Charities, Stronger Communities' Lobbying Campaign

The Wheel invites you to get involved with our Stronger Charities, Stronger Communities Lobbying Campaign, which takes place on 6 & 7 July 2018.

The purpose of this campaign is to help you raise your voice about the issues affecting your nonprofit, as well as to highlight some of the wider issues and challenges facing our sector as a whole.

How to Raise Your Voice

It’s couldn’t be easier – all you have to do is book a face-to-face appointment at your local TDs constituency clinic for either 6 or 7 July.

You can find your local TDs contact details here.

In addition to highlighting your own organisation’s issues, we also encourage you to consider drawing attention to the following three shared issues that have emerged during our recent lobbying workshops:

1. Insecure funding: community and voluntary organisations, charities and social enterprises struggle to plan, because statutory funding is allocated on an annual basis, instead of a multi-annual basis. We need statutory funding to be allocated on a multi-annual basis to provide for the full costs of delivering services.
2. The rising cost of compliance and reporting: charities are implementing a growing list of reporting requirements from multiple regulators, funders and state bodies. There is excessive duplication between the various reporting processes, and this is adding to the administrative load on charities. We need Government to streamline compliance requirements and for the costs of compliance to be funded.
3. Recruiting and retaining voluntary trustees: groups of volunteers called trustees govern all charities. However, organisations are finding it difficult recruit and retain suitable volunteers for their boards. We need comprehensive government supports for the governance of charities.

If you are unable to meet your TD in person, you can still participate in the Stronger Charities, Stronger Communities campaign by taking one or more of the following actions on 6/7 July:

• Send a letter to your TD
• Send an email
• Telephone.

Let us know

Please let us know that you have either meet with your TD in-person, or have contacted them using one of the alternative methods outlined above. You can do this by emailing lauren@wheel.ie.

Free Lobbying Toolkit

Download our lobbying toolkit here. These tools will support you to emphasis successfully the important issues affecting your organisation. The toolkit will equip you to become an effective policy influencer in your own communities. Through the collective efforts of community organisations across the country, we can have a significant impact at national level. 

Visit www.lobbying.ie for more information on lobbying.