The Chamber of Commerce and the Council of Voluntary Organisations are currently running a survey that aims to find out how the pandemic is affecting registered charities in terms of its impact on income, cash reserves and delivery of services.

For the Manx SPCA, the three businesses it runs are a vital element in its funding and all of these are in sectors that have been impacted by Covid.

Liam Rice, the charity’s PR and fundraising co-ordinator explains how they are managing to keep going.

He says: ’I think all charities in general have suffered, the MSPCA in particular because obviously we’ve got different elements.

’We’ve got boarding, which was massively affected because people were not going on holiday, so we had no income there. We did do takeaways for the tea room when we could but there were times when we had to shut completely when it was a full lockdown.

’And we’ve got two charity shops as well, one in Bucks Road and one in Ramsey, which were both affected.

’All of those things combined together as an entity, that is what keeps us afloat as we aren’t government funded, we solely rely on donations and general income.

’So with all of those things down it was quite a worry. Luckily we had a really good year the year before so we weren’t panicking but if it had continued for much longer we would have been in really big trouble.

’And it wasn’t all doom and gloom: we were very heavily supported by online donations.’

Liam, who organises all the fundraising events for the ManxSPCA also found himself ’having to think outside the box’.

He says: ’All the events for the year were gone throughout 2020. We usually take in, per event, around £1,500 - £2,000 if there’s a sponsor involved and we usually have around five big events each year so that’s a lot of money lost as well.

’So I did a lot of virtual events: for instance we did a lockdown league with the animals - things like "how many goals do you think Dodger can score in 10 minutes?"

’It was refreshing to do something new.’

The periods of lockdown also gave the team at the ManxSPCA the chance to come together and reflect on the charity as a whole.

’Although it wasn’t a nice thing it brought the separate parts of the business together and it was quite a nice bonding experience.

’We were closed to the public so we were here solely for the animals and, much as we appreciate the flow of the public coming in, it was nice to actually get together as a team and just revamp the place.

One of the key questions they asked themselves, Liam says, was: ’What can we provide for the public and what are our limits?’

He goes on: ’For example we’ve been free for members of the public to come out and view us but we have a donation bucket now so people can come and see the cats and we don’t force them to donate but it’s just there and we raised quite a bit when we reopened.

’So it was just a chance to rethink what we do and how we do it.

’I would say we definitely did struggle but as it went on we got a bit cleverer about how we did things and how we spent money as well.’

When it came to the delivery of their services, such as rehoming dogs and tending to injured wildlife, Liam says: ’We didn’t stop taking in wildlife - people would leave them in the car park for us.

’And, luckily, when it all kicked off the dogs that were up for adoption at the time were already going through their homing process so we’d already done the inspections so we didn’t have to worry about entering people’s houses or anything like that. We did a virtual house check for one dog - it’s mostly about making sure the home is adequate and the garden is secure.

’All the animals had at least one physical meet. We have two large open fields which are fenced so we let the dogs bond with their new owner while staff watched from the other side of the field.’

There have been many reports in the national press about people buying puppies during lockdown then finding out they couldn’t cope with them. Liam reports that two or three dogs did come in after lockdown, with separation anxiety after their owners had returned to work.

Liam says: ’We actually thought it would be more. All cases were external to the ManxSPCA, so we had no connection to them prior: I believe all were young dogs that were just so used to having the owners home, that when they went back full time, the dogs couldn’t cope.

’We’re not here to judge: we’re here to help or at least offer advice. That is why we’re here at the end of the day.’

As the island has moved to the phase of living with the pandemic, the tea rooms have reopened and are doing well and Liam is once more about to plan two major events before the end of the year, the Fun Dog Show on August 28 and their Christmas Fair in November.

He says: ’We’re ticking along and it’s nice to see other charities are doing the same because we are very supportive of each other.

’It’s just nice to be back on our feet.’