Smallwood Trust becomes Living Wage Friendly Funder

The Smallwood Trust has joined the Living Wage Friendly Funder scheme – a movement of grant-makers that help charities to pay the real Living Wage.

The real Living Wage, currently £9.00 per hour (with a higher rate of £10.55 in London), is calculated every year according to the cost of living.

Paying the Living Wage to staff has well-documented benefits including improved productivity and retention together with team morale and reputational value. It is also the right thing to do.

Across the UK, one in four working people earns below the Living Wage, and two-thirds of children in poverty have a working parent.

We believe that a fair day’s work should mean a fair day’s pay, but we know that there is a huge amount of low pay in the third sector (with an estimated 27% of jobs paying below Living Wage).

At the Smallwood Trust we are already a Living Wage Accredited Employer and now we want to make sure that, where possible, we are funding posts at the Living Wage rate too.

From January 2019 we will be working with our partner organisations to encourage that any salaries and staff time funded by the Trust are costed at the Living Wage rate as a minimum.

You can find out more at www.livingwage.org.uk.