How to make a donation to the Bower House
“If you’d like to make a donation to help keep the Bower House serving Market Harborough you can do so in a number of ways:
1) Drop by in person to make use of our card reader or drop off cash or a cheque made out to “Harborough Christian Counselling Service”. We’d really like to meet you! (You can also complete a gift aid form if you are eligible and choose to. This means the government give us an additional 25p for every £1 you contribute, at no cost to yourself.)
2) Use the link below to donate on our ‘JustGiving’ page. It’s really easy to do and you can give anonymously if you want to.
Go to https://www.justgiving.com/h-c-c-s and click on the “Donate” button.
If you send a cheque please make it out to “Harborough Christian Counselling Service”.
Many thanks for your support. We really appreciate it.”
How is Bower House Funded?
It costs £51,000 every year to keep Bower House running.
We have a variety of income streams and these are shown below.
- People make a financial commitment to the work of the Bower House by direct credit or standing order. These are Friends and this is a core source of income. Read more about the Friends.
- Although our counsellors are volunteers and give their time for free; each counselling session costs the Bower House £25 to run. Clients are made aware the Bower House is a charity and are asked to make a contribution towards their session. However therapy is available irrespective of the ability to make a contribution.
- Churches make frequent donations to the charity, often as part of their gifting programme. In addition to churches; groups or organisations within churches also make gifts to the charity.
- Churches Together in Harborough frequently makes donations, sometimes from the united service collection or other services.
- Voluntary organisations occasionally make donations.
- We always apply for grants from the Summer Carnival, Late Night Shopping and the Rotary Swimarathon.
- We have had significant grant funding over many years from the Market Harborough & the Bowdens Charity.
- We run a programme of Fundraising Events throughout the year.
- We also reclaim tax through the gift aid scheme.
Friends of the Bower House
Friends was started when Christine and Jadz (our first Service Co-ordinators) and the then Chair of Governors took advice from a company about how we could increase our fundraising.
It was suggested that because we had such goodwill from the town, we should harness it by starting the Friends scheme. The idea being to get a lot of people giving a little so that we had a known income.
Since that start we have now grown to having 35 Friends who make a hugely valuable contribution to the running of Bower House. Our Friends are drawn from a variety of different sources:-
- Some are local church people
- Some have been through counselling themselves and realise our need of constant funding
- Some used to, or currently, volunteer with us.
Friends contribute in various ways:- through monthly or annual Standing Orders or, occasionally, on an ad hoc basis by giving cash throughout the year.
We are constantly building our circle of Friends who give us such wonderful support. If you would like to contribute in this way please get in touch.
