Koala Community Hub: supporting autistic and neurodivergent people

• Raised £13,481 from 78 supporters
• +£7,500 Extra funding from Sovereign Employment and Training Fund
• +£2,000 Extra funding from Sovereign Thriving Communities Fund
• To support more autistic and neurodivergent members of their community

Koala Community Hub provides opportunities for autistic and neurodivergent (ND) members of their community (including those with learning disabilities, LD) to meet their peers and access support and training in a sensory-safe environment, supported by volunteers who understand their barriers to engagement.

They also recognise the importance of engaging with all local services, organisations and authorities to help prevent future crises and to help their members feel safe and empowered.

Koala has expanded quickly – they receive multiple requests every day to support parents, young people and adults and they knew that this additional support (through enablement and mentorship) is desperately needed in their community.  Not only do they prevent people from experiencing mental health decline but also ensure that neurodivergent people, and those with LD, can live happy and secure lives in their own community. But with only one part time member of staff and fully volunteer-led, their long term goals were not sustainable.

The Koala Community Hub already offered 33 hours of in-person and online support per month. This includes Toddlers, Kids, Teens, Young People not in School, Adults, Parents, Young Adults, and LGBTQ+ groups.

They needed to raise funds so they could expand what they currently offer. The funds will enable them to:

• Meet community demand – as they are largely volunteer-led they do not have capacity to support the demand for their services.
• Create a sustainable legacy for future generations.
• Create a community enablement/mentorship programme. 
• Commence providing community outreach services.
• Help to relieve the overstretched services of GPs, CAMHS, hospitals and CMHTs.
• Allow their community to engage with therapeutic services and health/social care, in a space they feel safe in, without waiting until in crisis, therefore providing a preventative service.

To achieve this, they set up the Koala Community Hub Crowdfunder! They needed to raise £10,000 to fund their expansion and support their longer term goals.

We spoke to Tori and Chloe from Koala, who told us; “We hoped to reach our target which would have meant we could run our groups weekly and increase the support to our community by hiring a member of staff. We had seen other community groups do well on Crowdfunder and really hoped our community would get behind us. We attended the Crowdfunder webinar before we went live and used the tips and tricks to influence our own campaign.”

The crowd rallied around their project, with one supporter commenting, “I’ve been to a couple of sessions with my grandson and am very impressed with the work and support Tori and her team are providing.”

A local business who supported the project said, “Koala are making such a difference to so many lives each day. KP Safety solutions are proud to support them – well done 👏”

In the end, the Koala Community Hub team smashed their initial target and went on to raise £13,481 from 78 members of the community. This included £7,500 in funding from the Sovereign Employment and Training Fund, and £2,000 from the Sovereign Thriving Communities fund.

When talking about the impact of their Crowdfunder, the Koala team said; “The response from our community has been phenomenal, we were inundated with people asking us to run our groups more frequently and now that we are it has been very well received. We had people who struggled with monthly groups as the gap between was too long and this made coming back tricky, this is no longer an issue with people coming weekly and really feeling at home.”

Chloe and Tori said, “We were able to unlock extra funding from Sovereign which has gone towards supporting our community. We are so thankful for the extra funding as it has enabled us to take on a member of staff so that we can provide admin support and additional training.”

“Koala relies upon donations to run and crowdfunding enabled us to raise £13,481 which will help our doors remain open. Our new member of staff supports our volunteers with their training and personal admin. Many of our community struggle with completing admin and so this role was essential to support everyone.”

“We also have increased our groups from monthly to weekly which has been fantastic for our community. We are building a steady stream of regulars who depend upon us. Running on a more regular basis has meant that we can strengthen the bond between our community and staff/volunteers and people are more willing to ask for support.”

After such a successful experience of crowdfunding, and receiving the +Extra funding from Sovereign Housing, we asked Chloe and Tori for their top crowdfunding tips:

“It is really important to have great rewards but also to have people helping to share the campaign. We have people in our community who are unable to financially contribute but they helped us by sharing and spreading the word with friends.”

“Our local businesses were also very generous and our rewards ranged from vouchers to have a manicure, tickets to go bowling and even an oven!”

Feeling inspired? Find out if you could receive +Extra funding from Sovereign Housing!