December 2016
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If it is not too early, let me wish you all a very pleasant Christmas 2017 and a happy 2018. As ever, I am not writing to tap you for more money but to let you know how it is being spent.
The charity’s officers in its ninth year will remain David Drucker (Secretary), Gerald Burgess (Chairman), John Leckie (Treasurer) and Elizabeth Downie (Webmaster) who recently updated our website. All these individuals were unanimously re-elected to serve at the AGM held in Hale on 26th November 2017. All unavoidable expenses associated with the charity have been met from private non-charity sources as usual. Donations in the last financial year amounted to £3670 including Gift Aid tax rebate from the Charities Section of HMRC. Money continues to be donated by a wide range of individuals including especially members of a Christian fellowship based in Altrincham. Apart from individual donations, money was generated from an afternoon cream tea (raised over £600) and other events.
December 2018
If it is not too early, let me wish you all a very pleasant Christmas 2018 and a happy 2019. As ever, I am not writing to tap you for more money but to let you know how it is being spent.
The charity’s officers in its tenth year will be David Drucker (Secretary), Gerald Burgess (Chairman), Stuart Kinsey (Treasurer) and Elizabeth Downie (Webmaster) who updates our website. John Leckie has now retired as our Treasurer and I must thank him for his loyal service to the charity. John brought great experience to the task as will our new Treasurer. Changing the treasurer’s name at the bank proved a mammoth task but after “only” 14 weeks we achieved success. All unavoidable expenses associated with the charity have been met from private non-charity sources as usual. Income in the last financial year amounted to £3698. This included reclaimed Gift Aid tax rebate of £943 from the Charities Section of HMRC. Money continues to be donated by a wide range of individuals including especially members of a Christian fellowship based in Altrincham. We have been able to provide £2512 of support for a number of charities as follows:
Barnabus £1312 - Helping Manchester’s street homeless.
Food for the Hungry £600 - Helping deprived children overseas.
Mary’s Meals £500 - Meals and education for children internationally.
We also covered the cost of postage of shoe box donations for Samaritan’s purse in 2017 and for Teams4U this year.
Because of problems altering the bank mandate for cheque signatories, some donations have been delayed. Now that everything is sorted, we will shortly present cheques for £1000 to both Barnabus and to the local children’s charity, Wood Street Mission.
I will shortly be reclaiming a tax rebate through the Gift Aid Scheme. For every £1 you donate to the Tricia Fund, we make no admin charge and reclaim tax (if you are a tax payer) so your gift becomes £1-25p. We only support good charities which spend approx. 90% of income received actually helping people. I discover this from checking their accounts and speaking to the CEO. This means each of your £1 gifts becomes about £1.13p given to someone in food etc. In the case of Food for the Hungry, run by Christian volunteers, everything is spent on the charitable purpose. This compares with some charities which can spend over 90% of donations on themselves! Every £1 we receive will achieve a lot of good. I sincerely thank you for your support.
Thank you once again.
December 2019
If it is not too early, let me wish you all a very pleasant Christmas 2019 and a happy 2020. It seems incredible that the charity has almost completed ten years! Over £30,000 has been donated to other charities which have been carefully vetted.
The charity’s officers in its eleventh year will be David Drucker (Secretary), Gerald Burgess (Chairman), Stuart Kinsey (Treasurer) and Jack Colchester (Webmaster) who has updated our website. Please look at the updated website. Elizabeth Downie has now retired as our Webmaster (or should that be Webmistress?) and I must thank her for her loyal service to and support of the charity since its inception. All unavoidable expenses associated with the charity have been met from private non-charity sources as usual. Income in the last financial year amounted to £2111.47. This included a reclaimed Gift Aid tax rebate from the Charities Section of HMRC. Dealing with reclaiming Gift Aid tax on the internet is simple in theory but more like dealing with the Powers of Darkness in practice. Stuart (a retired financial adviser) came to my rescue fortunately. Money continues to be donated by a wide range of individuals including especially members of a Christian fellowship based in Altrincham. We have been able to provide £3520 of support for a number of charities as follows:
Barnabus £1000 - Helping Manchester’s street homeless.
Food for the Hungry £500 Helping deprived children overseas.
Mary’s Meals £500 - Meals and education for children internationally.
Wood Street Mission £1500 - Helping deprived children in Manchester and Salford.
We also covered the cost of postage of shoe box donations for Teams4U this year.
I (or our treasurer) will shortly be reclaiming a tax rebate through the Gift Aid Scheme. For every £1 you donate to the Tricia Fund, we make no admin charge and reclaim tax (if you are a tax payer) so your gift becomes £1-25p. We only support good charities which spend approx. 90% of income received actually helping people. I discover this from checking their accounts and speaking to the CEO. This means each of your £1 gifts becomes about £1.13p given to someone in food etc. In the case of Food for the Hungry, run by Christian volunteers, everything is spent on the charitable purpose. This compares with some charities which can spend over 90% of donations on themselves! I also now avoid charities which pay exorbitant salaries.
I want your money to reach the people you actually want to help. Every £1 we receive will achieve a lot of good. I sincerely thank you for your support.
Thank you once again.
November 2020
After a difficult 2020, we look forward to 2021 and the hope of some normality. It is amazing that this year a virus (so small that it cannot be seen even with a powerful light microscope) has wreaked such havoc.
The meeting which would normally agree officers for the coming year has not been allowed to meet because of lockdown.
Therefore, we will need to be less democratic than usual and ask the officers to continue in their roles. Thus, the charity’s officers in our twelfth year will be David Drucker (Secretary), Gerald Burgess (Chairman), Stuart Kinsey (Treasurer) and Jack Colchester (Webmaster). Our income has been reduced this year to £1185 with nearly £300 of tax rebate to claim. It included an individual generous donation specifically to be passed onto Mary’s Meals. Other donations included the donations from the funeral of my mother-in-law, Mrs Mary Slater. Those funeral donations with Gift Aid tax rebate come to over £900. Mary loved children, had been a teacher and her first husband was an Independent Methodist Minster. The donation has been passed to a local charity (Wood Street Mission) which helps thousands of deprived children each year and very appropriately had been founded by a Methodist. Our money will be used in their Christmas appeal which ensures that children who otherwise might not have a Christmas present will now receive one. It is difficult to imagine what it is like to be a child without a Christmas present. We gave another local charity, Barnabus, a £1000 donation in March. The pandemic seriously affected their homeless drop-in centre but empty rooms in hotels provided an unexpected opportunity for homeless folk to be housed at local government expense. The charity was then able to lead some of those folks back into regular society with a permanent roof over their head.
Mary’s Meals feeds over 1,600,000 children every day in very poor countries. The pandemic stopped their work proceeding in its usual way, but Mary’s Meals adapted. When children were not allowed to attend a school for a meal and lessons, the charity reached out to the children on a more localised basis. Mary’s Meals has been offered a large sum of donation doubling money by the UK government. Until the end of January 2021, every pound donated will be matched pound for pound. This means that every pound given via the Tricia Drucker Memorial Fund this Christmas can become £2. It is always nice to get money back from the government isn’t it? All I need to do is to fill in an official form. We cannot send money we already have so we need to announce that donations in the next two months will be eligible for the donation matching scheme. I sincerely thank you for all your support.
November 2021
A year ago, I said “we look forward to 2021 and the hope of some normality”. At last, life is more or less returning to normal. The covid-19 hasn’t helped the folk we try to help. The work of the children’s charity, Wood Street Mission has been hindered. Last year, they could not set up a shop with Christmas presents that parents can buy for their children using vouchers provided by the charity. Parents could normally choose presents instead of being handed someone else’s choice as recipients of charity. Life is now getting back to normal. Children overseas helped by Mary’s Meals have had the normal pattern of a meal and lessons disrupted. Food was taken to children as they had to stay at home in some countries. Without that food, I wonder what would have become of them. Back in Manchester, Barnabus were told to close their drop-in centre but all was not lost. The council realised there were a lot of empty hotel rooms as businesses closed, temporarily or permanently. Street homeless people were placed in the vacant rooms where they were safe from hypothermia and the virus. Barnabus was still active but in new ways. With partner organisations, they provided 40,000 meals. Now that things are returning to normal, the drop-in centre is again open. Three of the Memorial Fund’s Officers have been in hospital in the last few months but we have survived. Our income has come to £5970 since end October 2020, boosted by £1810 kindly supplied by HMRC as Gift Aid that we claimed. We have provided £2250 to Barnabus, £1810 to Mary’s Meals and £937 to Wood Street Mission. From now until end January 2022, we are collecting for Mary’s Meals because every £ will be matched by another £ from generous donors during that time. Even better, we can claim tax back through the Gift Aid scheme. Put simply every £ from a tax payer will become £2.50, Every £ from a non-tax payer will still grow to £2. The charity’s officers in our thirteenth year will be David Drucker (Secretary), Gerald Burgess (Chairman), Stuart Kinsey (Treasurer), Steve Wright and Jack Colchester (Webmaster). No-one connected with the fund receives any remuneration or expenses and costs are separately covered by individuals
Thank you once again.
Dr David Drucker
December 2022
Season’s Greetings!
AS usual if it is not too early, let me wish you all a very pleasant Christmas 2022 and a happy 2023. As ever, I am not writing to tap you for more money but to let you know how it is being spent.
The charity’s officers in its ninth year will change somewhat due to illness of our Chairman, Gerald Burgess who has served the charity since its inception. He was with Tricia when she collapsed and died and was the person who told me about a wonderful charity, Barnabus which still supports the homeless in Manchester. Following a recent meeting, the Officers will now be David Drucker (Chairman), Lyn Drucker (secretary), Stuart Kinsey (Treasurer), Steve Wright and Jack Colchester (Webmaster). Of these, mandated cheque signatories will be any two out of DD, SK and SW.. All unavoidable expenses associated with the charity have been met from private non-charity sources as usual. Donations in the last financial year were in many cases supplemented by Gift Aid tax rebate from the Charities Section of HMRC. We have been able to support a number of charities as follows:
Barnabus £617 - Helping Manchester’s street homeless.
Wood Street Mission £300 - Helping deprived children in Manchester and Salford.
Mary’s Meals £1287- Meals and education for children in poverty, and exceptionally:
DEC Ukraine £1967 - International assistance for victims of Putin’s war in Ukraine.
Our Treasurer will shortly be reclaiming a tax rebate through the Gift Aid Scheme. For every £1 you donate to the Tricia Fund, we make no admin charge and reclaim tax (if you are a tax payer) so your gift becomes £1-25p. We only support good charities which spend over 90% of income received actually helping people. Money we supply to Mary’s Meals at Christmas is doubled by a benefactor so that every pound I give becomes £2.50!
In addition to money, I collect clothes for Barnabus and transport food from donors in the village to a food bank 7 miles away at Brownley Green Methodist Church. Even when their parents are working, many children there (over 40%) suffer food poverty.
It’s shocking to see how the “other half” live.
Thank you once again.
Dr David Drucker
01625 582770
December 2023
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As usual if it is not too early, let me wish you all a very pleasant Christmas 2023 and a happy 2024. As ever, I am not writing to tap you for more money but to let you know how it is being spent.
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The charity’s officers in its fifteenth year will be unchanged. I would like to record my gratitude to Elizabeth Downie who died recently and had been our first webmaster. I recently added up the donations we have made to very worthwhile causes over the last fourteen years. My original hope was that we would reach the humble sum of £100 after Tricia’s funeral service and possibly call it a day then. To my surprise, the total has now surpassed £47,000. I think the Almighty must have had more ambitious ideas than I had! This year has had its problems including Barclays bank losing forms I sent them and freezing the account. A formal complaint achieved little so I contacted the CEO of Barclays. I had to do that twice but eventually everything was sorted and everyone’s now friends again. All unavoidable expenses associated with the charity have been met from private non-charity sources as usual. Donations in the last financial year were in many cases supplemented by Gift Aid tax rebate from the Charities Section of HMRC. We have been able to support a number of charities as follows:
Barnabus
This charity helps rough sleepers in Manchester and provides continuing help. Folk who once slept in shop doorways are helped to live in proper accommodation assisted by skilled staff who provide the administrative and psychological help they need.
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Mary’s Meals
This charity feeds around 2.4 million children overseas every school day who would otherwise go to school with empty stomachs.
It is horrifying to me that children in this country can also go to school unfed. I am investigating what we can do. I frequently take a car load of food and other items to a church in Wythenshawe in an area of great need. This work has been supported by generous individuals and by local Anglican, Methodist, Roman Catholic and Baptist churches.
Thank you all once again.