Oxfam, which earlier this year cut its Cowley workforce by 71, is not the only charity to tighten its belt as the recession bites. Spare a thought, too, for smaller charities in Oxford, some of which fund university research, which are finding that the business of raising money is becoming tougher by the day.

A good example is Prof John Stein of Magdalen College, leading expert on dyslexia and chairman of the Dyslexia Research Trust.

Prof Stein said: “It is getting much harder to raise money, and I now spend a lot more of my time fund raising.”

Luckily, perhaps, for him, his research dovetails fairly neatly with the activities of his famous brother, TV chef Rick Stein, the charity’s patron, who advocates fish-eating to all his viewers.

The dovetailing occurs because Prof Stein says his research shows that a daily dose of fish oil aids attention span in all of us and is particularly good for dyslexics.

But the point here is that harder times for charities are translating themselves into harder times for researchers.

Prof Stein said: “To be fair, Government funds have increased slightly over the past few years, and now the Government is again promising extra research funds. But those extra funds have not materialised yet, and competition for them will in any case be extremely tough.

“So charity funding remains vital. But people who might have given £500 a year ago will now give £100 if you are lucky.”

Luck plays a big part in fund-raising. Focusing specifically on Prof Stein’s charity, for instance, it’s good luck that many dyslexics are unusually intelligent and particularly good at making money as entrepreneurs; indeed a recent survey by Forbes magazine found that half the world’s top entrepreneurs are dyslexic. Obviously they form a good target group of potential givers for John Stein.

But it’s bad luck that his field of research is not deemed as scientific at all by some; indeed the very existence of dyslexia is denied by one MP. Then there is Prof Stein’s former student Ben Oldacre, whose Bad Science column in The Guardian maintains that the benefits of fish oil have not been scientifically tested. But these are the sort of brickbats that anyone championing a cause close to their heart must learn to bear. Prof Stein says simply: “Lots of people think I am crazy.”

But he adds: “My brother and I carried out research on the effects of fish oil in the diet of prisoners at Polmont, near Falkirk, in Scotland, and the results were remarkable.

“Then there were studies at Durham Prison and at Aylesbury Young Offenders Unit, where we found that fish oil and, admittedly vitamins, had remarkable effects.”

He explained that about 75 per cent of people in jail are illiterate, and of these, many are dyslexic. One problem seems to be that many criminals are unable to read expressions on other people’s faces; mistaking, for example, laughter for agression. A change of diet can help here, tests show, with some young offenders actually complaining about how they lose their hard image.

And talkiing of diet, Prof Stein illustrates how much harder it is these days to raise charity money by pointing out that a few years ago he and multi-millionaire former Oxford University medical student Luke Johnson were turning away well-heeled well-wishers from Prof Stein’s charity event at London’s upmarket Ivy Restaurant, then owned by Mr Johnson, whereas demand for places at a similar event next month at Magdalen College is less intense — even with the allure of first-class food fromRick Stein.

Like all charity fundraisers, Prof Stein feels he has an important sociological message to hammer home to anyone who will listen He says:”Few people realise how badly many UK citizens read. Up to 30 per cent (20 million) of our population leave school with reading worse than the average 11 year-old.

“This means they cannot follow the instructions on the back of a seed packet or look up ‘plumber’ in the Yellow Pages.

“Ten per cent have a reading age less than a six-year-old. Official statistics claim that we enjoy a literacy rate of 99 per cent in Britain, but that merely means that 99 per cent can recognise and sign their own name.

“If that is all they can do, this hardly equips them to operate successfully in modern life. In the present recession they are the most likely to lose their jobs.”

He added: “This lack of skills is reckoned to cost the country more than £2bn per year in additional educational and social costs, not to mention an additional £3bn if lost production and damage by those failing to understand written instructions at work is taken into account.”

But returning to the thorny question of the role luck plays in fund-raising, Prof Stein is the first to admit that he is lucky to have a “famous brother” to help him.

But, to stray into dangerous waters here, how does he reconcile the message that we should all be eating more fish (and incidentally my interview with Prof Stein occurred over a lunch of fish and chips) with the fact that world fish stocks — souce of the wonderful dishes Rick Stein produces — are being depleted.

He said; “If you take it in supplement form you can obtain fish oil from krill, a small shrimp-like creature. And the richest form of Omega 3, which we all need, can be found in algae — and the richest form of algae is to be found in seaweed. There is no need to eat round fish.”

All in all, the message for charities large and small in the coming recession seems to be the same as for other businesses: when the going gets tough, the tough get going. But even in that cliche there is a trap for dyslexics: that “ough” in tough.

The truth is that reading English is more difficult than reading some other languages.

Prof Stein quotes: “Though the rough, tough, cough and hiccough plough me through, o’er life’s dark lough, my course I still pursue.”

For details of the dinner, contact the Dyslexia Research Trust, 01865 272116.