ISN'T it wonderful how generous people can be – even in difficult times?

As President of the League of Friends of Musgrove Park Hospital, I was out with a group of fellow volunteers shaking buckets at a recent meeting of Taunton Races. 

And we raised close to £1,000.

Thank you to everyone who chipped in, not least the on-course bookies who were fantastically generous (they must have had a good day!).

But as someone connected with at least four charities locally, I know it’s getting tougher by the day to raise funds. In some cases it’s a real battle to survive.

Cuts in funding by local councils and government agencies have left charities who deliver public services having to cut back on staffing and the vital services they provide.

Turning to charity donations often can’t plug the gap. Times are tough – and the reality is people are giving less.

Yet these “third sector organisations” as they are sometimes called are crucial.

The Chairman of the Somerset NHS Foundation Trust recently said that without charities like the League of Friends, Red Cross, cancer charities and others, the NHS would struggle to provide the care it does.

And Somerset Council has relied heavily on charities in the past, for instance to provide services for people living with dementia. Yet funding is now being cut.

St Margaret’s Hospice in Taunton gets less than a quarter of its income from the NHS. The air ambulance is almost entirely funded by charity donations.

Can this be right? Should such charities have to rely on legacies and fundraising to exist?  And with fundraising getting harder, what does the future look like?

Somehow I can’t see the councils or the government stepping in with more cash. So it’s going to fall to us and to the wonderful charities that are out there trying to make life better for all of us.

So give what you can when you can. It’s never been more important.