SARI Therapeutic Riding: Growing Sustainably with a Registered Charity Fund
SARI Therapeutic Riding: Growing Sustainably with a Registered Charity Fund
SARI Therapeutic Riding is an organization that many London Community Foundation fundholders and donors will be familiar with. While you might know about their Adopt-A-Pony or Paddock Partner initiatives, you might not know that SARI has held a Registered Charity Fund of its own at the Foundation for nearly 25 years.
Founded in 1978 in memory of Sarah (affectionately known as Sari) Greenberg, a girl born with Down Syndrome whose parents saw the joy that a connection with animals brought her, SARI now works with over 300 disabled people in the London and Middlesex region towards all sorts of goals.
Brooklyn Einwiller, Development Officer at SARI, with Major, one of the 21 horses that works with SARI’s clients.
“All of the services we offer are catered to meet a participant’s individual goals. We work with them to understand what benefits they’re looking for,” said Brooklyn Einwiller, SARI’s Development Officer. “It could be social – building relationships or reducing anxiety, or physical – building core strength and muscle tone to assist with mobility. There’s really a bunch of physical, social, and emotional benefits to therapeutic riding and experiences with horses.”
While a team of 250 volunteers and 21 horses are on hand to make this incredible work happen, the demand for SARI’s services continues to grow, with their waitlist currently sitting at 120 people. To be able to reduce that number, reliable, long-term sources of funding are needed so the staff team can plan ahead. That’s where the Registered Charity Fund, originally set up in 2000 thanks to a legacy gift, comes in.
“The fund was originally set up so our donors could have a place to know their funding was secure and could provide us a source of consistent funding. Maybe a donor would leave a legacy gift, the fund was a place that the donor could feel confident about leaving it in the knowledge that it would provide a long-term benefit,” Brooklyn said.
Around 70% of SARI’s income comes from donations, so making these sources of donations as reliable and sustainable as possible is crucial. Their fund means the team know they can plan on a set amount of money coming in every year without having to rely on the repeated individual generosity of donors, as Brooklyn explains: “A lot of our donors and sponsors are very consistent and do give every year, but it’s an expensive commitment, and it’s hard to find individuals who can commit to that sort of annual donation when life has other plans sometimes.”
It is often challenging for charities to raise unrestricted funding to support the infrastructure needed for a charity to sustain itself and grow. While sponsoring a pony is a tangible proposition to a corporate partner, for example, giving money for the nuts and bolts that help ensure an organization’s success isn’t as exciting.
Thanks to the reliable unrestricted income from their Registered Charity Fund, SARI has recently started working on the creation of a new website. While the current site is functional enough, accessibility standards are ever-changing, and for an organization that works in service of people with disabilities, making sure their website is accessible to everyone is a key part of their plan to grow.
“The Registered Charity Fund is great because people can put in any amount and we’re still going to know that that is concrete and isn’t going away, and we can count on it for years to come,” Brooklyn said. “We saw a decline in support following the pandemic as everything became more expensive, so if other charities are seeing the same thing, opening a registered charity fund might be a great idea, especially running alongside a planned giving program.”
Curious about registered charity funds at London Community Foundation? Speak to our philanthropy team today!