2024-25: An essential hub for community activity

During 2024-25, the Resource Centre has continued being a lively hub of community activity, providing essential services for small groups in the city. When our front desk is open, four days a week, the Centre is filled with groups dropping in for DIY print, collecting or returning equipment, asking for advice, and telling us what they are doing and learning. The Centre’s abuzz with the sounds of organisers doing community work, meeting each other, and sharing ideas and information.

A total of 592 different groups used our services during the year, making 1987 visits and phone calls to the Centre. At our AGM in October 2024, we reflected on the impact these groups have had in the city, in their communities and for their volunteer organisers. To support their work, we provided:

Printing service: skills, connections, and printing too!

288 groups used our print room during the year, making 1685 uses of our equipment altogether. By far the majority of these uses were DIY, instead of groups requesting staff to do their printing for them on a send-and-collect basis.

We’re delighted with this as it reaffirms what we have learned: groups really value being able to do their own printing, in a community-focused space, with full control over the process. Community organisers get the opportunity to learn new skills with new print equipment and design programmes, and can discuss the aims and impact of printed material with workers who understand the context and importance of their work.

Being in the Centre is also an opportunity to meet community organisers from different groups, find out more about what is going on in other parts of the city, and build connections and community. It is a hub of information exchange, with knowledge being built and shared among everyone in the Centre, workers and users alike.

Women of Colour said: “I’ve been amazed by what’s available and by the learning and sharing that’s going on between staff and all the people who use the Centre. There’s a lot of skill sharing going on. You also make it easy to access resources – thank you for the simplicity, you make my life easier.”

Equipment hire: shared resources for the city

336 groups made 1407 equipment hire uses during 2024-25:

  • Equipment for meetings and indoor events: 411
  • Fundraising equipment: 643
  • Play equipment: 353

We know groups are facing a particularly difficult fundraising landscape at the moment, and use of our equipment allows groups to organise fundraising events. In our most recent survey (2024), we asked groups how much money they had raised at their most recent fundraising event and the average amount was £2,900. Based on this figure, we estimate that our equipment hire service helped groups in the city raise over £650,000 for their vital work during 2024-25.

During the year, we added some new items to our equipment for hire:

Information and advice: simply invaluable

Our online information service provides free, clearly-written guidance for community group organisers. All of our information is developed in response to questions from our user groups, and based on the insight we have gained from years of working with and learning from the experiences of our member groups.

We routinely receive enquiries from organisations all over the country (and around the world) asking to share our resources. We are always happy to oblige, provided we are appropriately credited.

In 2024-25:

  • We had 3,964 uses of the information pages on our website from people in Brighton and Hove, and 213,701 views of our information pages from around the globe.
  • Our drop-in, advice on demand service was used by 78 different groups on a total of 215 occasions.
  • We carried out 287 longer support sessions with 42 different groups. This support covered 38 different topics, with the most frequent enquiries being fundraising, budgeting, reporting to funders, book-keeping, legal structures, bank accounts, committee roles, and communications.
  • As part of the above we supported 27 groups with fundraising applications, budgeting and book-keeping. The total grant income raised as a result of our support was £128,525.
  • We carried out 48 examinations of accounts.

Our consistently available advice and support for member groups continues to be valued and appreciated. New groups find us approachable and helpful, and the groups we have worked with for many years often express how critical the support of the Resource Centre is to enable them to survive and do the things their communities need. For example, our member groups said this year:

“The Resource Centre have been great at explaining the complexities of formalising our group. They were able to meet us where we are at and helped clarify the next steps to take. This support is crucial to keep this valued community group running.” LGBTQ Neurodiversity Meet-Up

“Without the Resource Centre’s help we would not be who we are today as one strong community and we are very grateful to them. Every time we face a challenge, they always there for us to help.” Soof Egg (Vision for a Better Future)

“Their delivery, advice and availability are impeccable, the team are so lovely and efficient. We are blessed to have them in our community for support.” AlNoure Academy

“Without the help of everybody at the Resource Centre I seriously doubt whether Hollingdean RA could have continued operating. You backed us up at a time when the secretary and chair have suffered periods of illness. I can only thank your staff at a time we really needed it.” Hollingdean Residents’ Association 

Community groups – a place of purpose and belonging

At our AGM in October 2024, the staff team presented this report, reflecting on the impact of community group activity in the city:

2023 was a tough year for many of the groups and people we met at the Centre. The cost of living crisis was really biting and everyone was struggling to cover the cost of food, fuel and housing.

The amount of funding available for community groups on the front line was not keeping pace with the continuing need for the work you do.

Nevertheless, hundreds of small community groups kept going, and kept their members going, with practical and emotional connections and help.

Between April 2023 and March 2024, 584 different groups used the Resource Centre.

We looked through the list of user groups for the year, and found that:

  • 36 were directly providing people with the things they need to stay alive: food or housing—that includes 24 food and homelessness projects all across the city
  • 56 groups were about keeping our shared spaces up and running—15 community buildings, 13 environmental projects and 28 groups enabling access to green space in parks and nature
  • 90 were focused on activities for children, including 55 of the city’s schools
  • 104 groups were about giving people a voice and a space to reflect their shared beliefs—26 faith organisations and 78 campaigning and advocacy groups
  • 123 groups were about nurturing wellbeing in all its forms—sport, health services, arts and culture
  • The biggest section, though, was the 142 groups that just exist to bring people together—whether that’s in the form of a neighbourhood residents’ association, a support group for people with a shared experience, or a street party, Resource Centre user groups make it possible for all kinds of people to find each other and offer some mutual support.

One of the themes that comes up again and again when we are doing fundraising work with groups of people who are migrants to the UK is the idea that the group acts like an extended family for its members.

For people who have been forced to leave their home country and settle in the UK, without family members nearby, community groups can be a way of meeting that important human need for connection and help when the inevitable troubles of life turn up.

In fact, we think that is true for all community groups. People working together in food banks, school PTAs, friends of parks groups, football teams and theatre companies are all creating the sense of connection and shared purpose that we all need.

Some of you might remember Rose, who used to work with us at the Resource Centre. In 2023 she finished her PhD, which was about how grassroots community groups responded to the Covid pandemic.

Her research found that small community groups were better than larger organisations at understanding what people needed and acting quickly to meet those needs. Not a big surprise to any of us!

Rose found that when groups had enough resources, they were able to use their knowledge and skills to meet the needs of their communities, but when funding was tied to the priorities of funders or local authorities, this could sometimes get in the way.

Finally, she found that being in a community group helped to meet the needs of the group volunteers, as well as the people they were helping. It gave them a sense of purpose and belonging.

But—again, as we all know—being in a community group can be exhausting if there is not enough backup and support for you.

That’s where the Resource Centre comes in! We know how vital the work you are doing is, both for you and for the members of your communities. And we know how draining it can be when the resources and support are not there to back you up.

As long as we can continue to get the funding we need to keep going, we will continue to be there to support you, and the hundreds of other community groups in the city.

Thank you for everything you’re doing, and do call on us when you need a hand.

Page updated: October 2025