Trusts and foundations are grant-making organisations which distribute money among other charities.
Typically established by major donors or corporations, trusts and foundations, both of which are forms of charities, generally obtain their funds either via major gifts or through their endowment (income from invested donations).
There is no rule as to how trusts and foundations distribute their funds to other charities. It may be by establishing project specific grants which charities apply to receive, or they may accept grant applications for unspecified projects on a rolling deadline.
Both are regulated by the Charity Commission.
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Young people leaving care, older people with dementia and their carers will be the focus of a new £50m Big Lottery Fund in Scotland.
A new community foundation launching today in Dorset will offer donors a new level of control over their gifts.
The Lloyds Banking Group is to increase its funding to the Lloyds TSB Foundation for England and Wales by nearly a quarter to £25.24m for 2011, as MPs lobby government to intervene in the banking group's dealings with its Scottish foundation.
The majority of charities applying for grants from the Lloyds TSB Foundation last year were ineligible for funding and wasting their time.
Trusts and foundations have lost between 20 and 30 per cent of their value, but there has not been a commensurate drop in grant making, argued the head of a top foundation.
The Big Lottery Fund is introducing a “lighter-touch” Reaching Communities application process for organisations seeking grants of up to £40,000 a year.
The value of grant-making fell last financial year despite a record amount of money going in to trusts from private individuals.
The proposal to set up 'remainder trusts' for major donors in the UK has been unfairly criticised, says Adrian Beney. The giving mechanism has some life in it yet.
Charities could see a spike in giving from major donors following the top tax rate change in April.
A report last week predicting that giving could be boosted by £74bn by the introduction of two major donor-centric reforms has come under fire by consultant Joe Saxton.
The suggestion that £74bn could be pumped into charities via remainder trusts and a new type of trust, as proposed by a paper last week, is not supported by either evidence or demand, says Joe Saxton.
Donations to the arts fell by 7 per cent last financial year, declining nearly equally across individual, corporate and trust fundraising streams.
Charitable foundations are “underutilised” and should be required by law to spend at least 5 per cent of their total endowment each year, according to a report by Cass Business School.
Princes Harry and William have established a new grantmaking charity as the primary focus of their charitable energies.
The Directory of Social Change’s Jay Kennedy offers tips for fundraisers about how to access and evaluate grant terms and conditions One of the areas we’ve recently researched as part of our Great Giving campaign involves the terms and conditions of grant funding – basically, the ‘small print’. Terms and conditions spell out in a formal way what you are obliged to do in order to receive and spend a grant. They will typically cover important requirements like monitoring and reporting schedules, payment terms, what happens if you underspend, issues of intellectual copyright, etc.
A number of charitable trusts have stopped taking new applications or are delaying making decisions about grants while they wait to see the full impact of the recession on their endowments. Consultant Simon George, who founded the Institute of Fundraising’s trusts special interest group, said the current recession was affecting trusts and foundations worse than any previous downturn he could remember.
The NCVO’s new Funding Central website has unveiled two new zones – one for those organisations seeking like-minded partners to jointly bid for a grant or contract, and one for providers of funding. The Partners Zone allows visitors to create an online profile and search for organisations who have already expressed an interest in finding partners, or describe their own activities and experiences of applying for funding. They can make this information public in order that others may find them through a search.
A former development director with Scope has become the chief executive of two grantmaking charities – Community Foundation for Merseyside and Community Foundation for Lancashire – in a new partnership which will see the foundations share a finance and grants team, but retain separate fundraising departments. The scheme has been set up so the ten-year-old Community Foundation for Merseyside can support the newly-formed Lancashire Foundation in its development
A new £10.2m grants programme has been launched by the Human Rights Commission. The Strategic Funding Programme will deliver three-year, project specific grants worth up to £450,000. Grassroots programmes, focusing on individuals and local communities, are the primary target of the new programme. This new programme will form part of the Human Rights Commission's three-year strategy to deliver a fairer, more equal Britain, which is due to be launched sometime in June.
Internal disputes at the Friends of Highgate Cemetery Trust have sparked two complaints to the Charity Commission. Clashes over governance issues including the length of trustee terms and how to plan the future of the grade-II listed cemetery, which is home to the graves of Karl Marx and George Eliot, have become public after more than a year of being waged within the organisation. The dispute became personal this week as Caroline Coombes, a longstanding friend of the cemetery, told a local newspaper that “people are terrified of [chairwoman] Jean Pateman and are terrified about being expelled if they speak out”.
Charities have been left hanging as pledged grant money from Lehman Brothers Foundation Europe remains tied up in bankruptcy proceedings. A number of charities which had been pledged multi-year funding from the Foundation are now unsure if they will ever receive the money, despite being confident at the time of its parent company Lehman Brothers collapse in September last year. Jean Gross, director of Every Child A Chance – the biggest recipient of the Foundation’s funding – said the charity still does not know when the money will be forthcoming. The organisation had been pledged £1m over five years and told PF in September that they “had an assurance that [they] will receive the funding”.
Acevo is taking over the ImpACT Coalition from the Institute of Fundraising after its decision to reduce the coalition's annual £50,000 grant. Soon after the Institute’s announcement sector organisations offered support to ImpACT, which stands for Improving Accountability, Clarity and Transparency, with Charities Aid Foundation giving £15,000 and the Charity Finance Directors’ Group and Public Fundraising Regulatory Association each providing £5,000. Now Acevo has stepped in to take over the coalition, which was originally formed to establish a better understanding of how charities work.
A new £3.2m grant scheme is available to charities helping disadvantaged groups with housing and financial issues. The Nationwide Foundation has released the grants in response to increased pressure from the recession. Funding will be focused towards organisations who work with survivors of domestic violence or older people, particularly those from disadvantaged or minority backgrounds.
Charities are planning to beef up their fundraising activities ahead of the recession as one in five report that the downturn has already had an impact on their income. A report produced by PricewaterhouseCoopers, the Institute of Fundraising and Charity Finance Directors Group (CFDG) reveals that 62 per cent of the 362 organisations surveyed expect to increase fundraising efforts, although only 22 per cent plan to increase the number of fundraising staff.
The Conservatives have published proposals to reform the National Lottery that they claim would increase its independence from government.
Intelligent Giving, a new website that scores charities based on the information in their annual reports, has met with a mixed reaction from the sector.
Is it time for foundations to take some proper responsibility?
The Big Lottery Fund is planning to hold a stakeholder meeting in late November to gather feedback on the first year of its controversial demand-led programme, Reaching Communities.
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