Celebrating small charities in 2024

With an income of under £1m, Incredible Kids is one of the many small charities working hard to support people at a grass roots level.

By Jai Breitnauer, Incredible Kids Trustee

It’s Small Charity Week, five days of celebrating the work of small and mostly local or regional charities across England and Wales. Incredible Kids counts as a small charity, with an income of (well-under!) £1m, and a focus on our local area. If you aren’t familiar with us already, we provide weekly supported play sessions for young people aged 0 to 25, plus a listening ear and advice for parent-carers. Our main aim is to combat the loneliness disabled young people and their families often experience, and its knock-on effects.

Incredible Kids is also a ‘grass roots’ charity. Do you know what that means? Basically, a grass roots organisation has been started by, and continues to be run by, its main service users.

Our Chair of Trustee’s, Jennie Prewett, launched Incredible Kids with some other parent-supporters in June 2012, to meet an un-catered for need in Bristol and South Gloucestershire – 12 years on we are still going strong with Jennie at the helm!

I became a trustee of Incredible Kids in 2023, and I have previously worked for Incredible Kids and my children come to sessions. We try to make sure that services users are well represented on our board of trustees. Plus we have over 40 parent-carer volunteers who use our service and support others, and we really couldn’t run the sessions without you.

According to Small Charity Week, who support small organisations like ours, small charities make up 96% of all charities in England and Wales. Yet of the £2.bn gifted to charities each year, small charities only get 4% of it. We can do a lot with just a little bit of money, and we make our resources stretch. But we couldn’t do it without you – supporters, volunteers, donators and social media sharers.

Incredible Kids has over 3500 members, has won a Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service, and had supported thousands of young people and their families to find a community, get support and succeed in their own way for over a decade. Please help us to continue our essential work. Share this blog, donate if you can, and if you have some time to spare then do contact us about volunteering or becoming a trustee.

Donate to Incredible Kids, get in touch via info@incrediblekids.org.uk or find out more about our play sessions.