Family Fund Saves Money and Provides Greater Choice with flexecash from Love2reward

The Family Fund is a registered charity working across the whole of the UK. Funded by the national governments of England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales It is the largest independent grant-giving organisation helping low-income families caring for a severely disabled child or young person. The charity supports families by providing grants that relate to the need of their disabled child or young person and in the year 2009/10 distributed £32.8 million to 55,000 families.

According to Claire White, Operations Director for The Family Fund, "We give grants for things that make life easier and more enjoyable for the disabled child, young person and their family, such as washing machines, clothing, driving lessons, computers and holidays. Historically we awarded those grants in cash, however this has now changed to a point where we hold contracts with individual retailers, so that cash no longer comes into the equation."

"We have not had an increase in English core funding since 2003, not even an inflationary increase, so we're always looking at how we can make our money go further. We aim to ensure that 91 pence out of every £1 we are given goes out in grants. When we moved from cash to contract some five years ago, our clothing grants were fulfilled by one retailer, but this arrangement was very limiting. Our customers sometimes found it difficult to buy exactly what they needed for their children, and the costs of running this element of the scheme were considered too high. So when that particular contract came up for renewal again this year, we looked at the alternatives and came across Flexecash from Love2reward. This multi-retailer card can be loaded remotely with value, and can be spent in a number of retailers, including Debenhams, River Island, New Look, Bhs, Matalan and Peacocks. The costs of running this card-based scheme were much lower than our previous arrangement, and our customers benefit from being able to shop in six great stores as opposed to one. Needless to say we changed to Flexecash in September of this year and the whole process has been easy from start to finish."

Once an application has been received, The Family Fund team will check eligibility of the applicant and review the grant items that the family have specified will make a difference to the care of their disabled child or children."With clothing grants, we write to the applicant and tell them they have been successful and Love2reward provide them with a card and pin, which are sent separately via normal post. Once the card is delivered, the recipient simply calls an automated telephone service to activate their card, then it's ready to use. Love2reward handle all the administration and load the funds. We've cut out unnecessary admin, save costs on running the scheme and the customer gets more choice. And we're able to put the money that we save straight back into the 'grant pot', everyone wins."

"As the scheme develops, additional retailers can be added to the scheme and all cardholders will automatically be able to spend in those additional stores. Equally if we decide to move another contract type across to the Flexecash scheme, we can have a second card specifically allocated to cover that product-type, which could theoretically be restricted to spend in one particular retailer. The whole scheme is extremely flexible. We're delighted with the new process and we know our customers are also very happy, we conduct satisfaction surveys regularly so we would soon become aware if we weren't meeting everyone's expectations", Claire concludes.

For more information on the flexecash range or any of Love2reward's products, talk to us today: