While businesses across the UK brace themselves for the Brexit fall-out Oxfam has predicted it will lose up to £40m a year in funding from the European Union, while its programmes are up 20% more expensive because of the effect on exchange rates.
Speaking at the Institute of Fundraising Convention in London this week, director of fundraising Tim Hunter said the charity had received £40m from the EU in 2014/15 to tackle issues such as the refugee crisis, but it was uncertain if it would be able to access similar levels of funding in future.
He said: “The foreign exchange situation continues to be bad. Most of our income is in either pounds or euros, and most of our expenditure is in dollars or closely related currencies, so somewhere between 10% and 20% of the expenditure requirements in our programmes arrived last Thursday and look like they are here to stay.”
He added that the shortfall would eat into the charity’s reserves rapidly.
Hunter also said he was concerned that the increased risk of a recession posed by Brexit could lead to large numbers of existing donors cancelling their direct debits with the charity.
It was also worrying, he said, that many of the people who voted to leave the EU had a relatively low commitment to international aid when compared with the Government, which is committed to spending 0.7% of GDP on the area. “How significant a player is the UK going to be in terms of international development going forward?” he asked.
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