A Christmas message from the Timber Trades’ Benevolent Society

We could not do it without your corporate and individual financial donations or without the incredible support you give to our National Golf event and all the other social events organised by our nine Regional Committees around the UK.

Our committees are made up of very hard-working volunteers who go to great effort to organise a calendar of fantastic events which can all be found on www.ttbs.org.uk.

Approximately 45% of our funding comes from our well-managed TTBS investment portfolio, built up over nearly 120 years, which we need to maintain, and continue to build on, to provide the basis for our funding for the future years. The balance of our overall annual requirement is provided by legacies, donations and the proceeds from our fund-raising efforts.

So we most definitely need your continued support!

During 2013, we expanded our criteria to include employees of the Trussed Rafter Association fabricator members and this year, we have taken this further, to include employees who work in timber treatment facilities, carrying out bulk preservation of timber products for importers, merchants and other end users.

Our beneficiaries are helped in many ways with a combination of various grants and allowances, including quarterly payments, TV licences, telephone allowances, payments in the spring and at Christmas, a winter fuel allowance and luxury Christmas hampers. We also make one-off grants for domestic appliances and disabled equipment as well as the occasional respite break and help with funeral expenses.

In 2014, we are expecting to distribute over £115,000 to assist the retired and sick from the timber trade and also some younger beneficiaries, who have fallen ill, have become handicapped or who have lost partners and are still caring for children.

All the help the TTBS gives is in addition to state assistance and benefits, so we are able to bring a little additional joy to our beneficiaries’ lives.

We continue to have two major challenges that we are working on very hard.

The first is to find more new beneficiaries to help. With the ever-changing industry, much of the personal contact from family businesses has been lost and when people retire from work, they are invariably forgotten. So the TTBS needs to address this through companies’ HR departments, to ensure employees know where they can get help from in the future.

Secondly, the Society needs to continue to improve its networking with the timber industry to ensure that it keeps pace with the changes – something that again we have been prioritising throughout 2014.

Please help us in any way that you can, particularly by providing us with your HR contacts and by ensuring that all your employees and colleagues are made aware of the TTBS’s work. We have posters and hand-outs available by request to the email below.

Finally, may we wish you and your families, a very happy festive period and a healthy and successful 2015. Ivan Savage, TTBS general manager, info@ttbs.org.uk