How is Aurora Funded?

 

As with many, if not most, small to medium charities finding the finance to keep Aurora going is an ongoing and challenging process. We need funds to pay the rent for our premises (we don’t own a property); we need to pay for essential overheads and most of our therapists need to paid for providing counselling services.

 

Unlike many charities Aurora is largely self-funded through the contributions clients make for their therapy. In fact, on average 90% of our annual income is generated this way, and although this allows a certain level of independence and security not often possible with organisations totally reliant on external funding it also creates a moral dilemma for when clients cannot afford therapy. In an ideal world, we would be offering counselling services to everybody at a much reduced cost or even free, but if we were to do that Aurora just would not exist as we would be financially unsustainable.

 

The answer is of course to try and find a balance; to try and generate income from external and diverse sources. In this way we can move towards making our services available to a lot more people in need. For a long time we have been trying to find this balance so we can ensure we get the external funding needed to open our doors wider to more people. However, the level of competition from other charities, all trying to promote their cause to the general public and to grant holders, makes this an enormously difficult task. Securing grants is particularly challenging and Aurora has fought for many years to gain sufficient funding to make a real difference.

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Over the years Aurora has been successful in securing small grants from charitable trusts and from the statutory sector, and these are all acknowledged in our 10 year anniversary report available for download on the home page of this website. 

 

In 2022, Aurora was very fortunate to have been awarded a 4 year grant from the City of London Corporation’s charitable funder, City Bridge Trust and a 5 year grant from The National Lottery Community Fund.