Like many other registered charities, the National Association for Bikers with a Disability (NABD) has taken a financial pummelling since the Coronavirus pandemic struck the UK. Our largest annual fundraising event, The You’ve Been Nabbed Rally had to be cancelled in May, causing a loss in the region of £35,000 to our annual revenue. Despite lots of claims by government sources that there would be help for charities during this crisis; the NABD has not been able to gain a single penny in governmental support. In addition to regular NABD fundraising events for 2020 having to be cancelled, many other events that traditionally support the NABD with sizeable donations have also been cancelled. When you also 8
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consider that the vast majority of people in the UK now find themselves less‐able to support their chosen charities, you begin to see the dire situation the NABD is facing as this year progresses.
2020 until the financial situation improves. This decision will be under constant revue, as will any other measures put in place to endure the survival of the NABD throughout this current crisis.
The profits from the annual You’ve Been Nabbed Rally usually cover a significant portion of the cost of employing our two paid employees, the Office Manager and the Administrative Assistant. Fortunately we were able to furlough our admin assistant, which has helped reduce the strain on NABD funds to some extent, but the almost total lack of income over recent months, and the prospect of worse to come, left the NABD Trustees no alternative but to suspend the NABD Adaptation Grants Scheme from June
Not being the sort of people to sit back twiddling our thumbs and hoping for ‘Manna from Heaven’, we decided to run an on‐line virtual event via the NABD Facebook page on the weekend that should have been The 29th You’ve Been Nabbed rally. Being a fairly impromptu project put together at fairly short notice the event did not raise as much money as we might have hoped but it did give us a chance to experience the problems relating to producing and managing an online event.
