Advice to Find a Way Forward

We provide free, independent, confidential and impartial advice to help people to find a way forward with the problems they face.


Advice covers many needs including maximising people's income by checking they receive the welfare benefits they are entitled to.  We give budgeting and debt management advice. We are qualified to complete Debt Relief Orders , enabling a fresh start. We help to address the widening inequality gap by supporting those who are at risk of homelessness and are experiencing financial and budgeting difficulties. We conduct research and campaign to improve the policies and practices that affect people's lives. What we learn is shared at a national level; this can result in changes to national policy.

We are seeking funding to enable us to maintain our current service to the people of Exeter. The vast majority of our workforce are volunteers. However, in order to retain such a high number of volunteers, we need to maintain a level of supervision. We need to increase the capacity of our training team to enable us to continue to recruit and train new volunteers, as well as support and mentor them as they move into advice giving to meet the increased demand from our clients.  

Funds raised will contribute towards providing training and ongoing support to our amazing team of volunteers taking calls on our telephone adviceline and helping clients face to face.  In addition to this, funds will help us retain our highly qualified small team of supervisors who ensure volunteers are giving accurate advice to clients. They are also available for any adviser who needs pastoral support with their own emotional well-being. This is not uncommon as a result of the high levels of vulnerability those needing our help often present with.

Last year we helped over  6,000 people with 20,000 issues and, in the process, increased income available to them, by over £4 million by enabling them to manage debt problems effectively, claiming benefits to which they were eligible, and by providing vital housing and consumer rights advice. 

Read our full Impact Report here: CAE 2023 - 2024

Much of our service is provided by highly trained volunteer advisers who live in the community and want to ‘give back' to make Exeter strong, resilient and a happy place for everyone to live.  

 As a charity we must fundraise to run our free advice service.  While we are a member of the Citizens Advice nationwide network, we receive no funding from the overarching organisation or from central government.  All our funding comes from local council grants, charitable grants and foundations for which we have to compete.

As the cost-of-living increases, we're finding more people need our help, yet funding is harder to come by.  This year, our contract with the local council ended and we have been given a one-off grant for just over one third of the amount we received under the contract.  We have been given indication that we will not receive a grant from the council next year.  This funding gap has meant that we have had to redesign our service and will need to make further changes as our income reduces.

 This is our first public fundraising campaign and we're doing it because we need your support.  Without it, we won't be able to help the people in Exeter who so desperately need us.  

Thank you!