New Year Dilemma: Outline Surrey trustees face decision to close services or close charity due to diminishing trustee/management and volunteers.

Outline a charity providing support for people facing challenges with Sexuality and Gender identity for over 20 years in Surrey is faced with some serious new year decisions. To stop one of their main services (Helpline or Outcrowd) or close the charity complete. The main reason is the challenge of retaining key unpaid voluntary management roles (trustees) and sufficient volunteers to provide trained cover for the main services. Outline has provided support to over 900 people on the helpline in 2016-2017 and a similar number already in 2017-2018. The Outcrowd social support group service has seen a similar footfall of circa 75 people a month attending events across Surrey.

What Outline need to survive is:
• Volunteers for the helpline service
• Managing Trustees – an unpaid role responsible for managing aspects of the charity
• Group Leaders and volunteers to provide face to face support during Outcrowd events

The decisions to close services or the charity will be made at the end of Jan 2018. If you don’t want to see the loss of another LGBT+ support service/charity please support Outline by volunteering or offering your management skills as a voluntary Manager. It would be devastating decision to close a charity with over 20 years’ experience in providing support to the LGBT+ communities in Surrey. With the closure of Outline would follow the loss of the famous Being Gay is OK website www.bgiok.org.uk which gets 10’s of thousands of hits monthly with younger people seeking help with their struggle with sexuality.

To continue Outline desperately need to find: