The Steve Morgan Foundation, a finalist in this year’s Charity Awards, has launched a bold new five-year strategy that will see it spend £20m a year tackling social disadvantage in Merseyside and neighbouring areas, as well as supporting diabetes research.
For nearly 25 years, the foundation has provided funding, advice, support and expert help to charities and other partners across Merseyside, North Wales, West Cheshire and North Shropshire.
Now it plans to significantly scale up its impact with £100m that will fund local solutions to improve people’s lives in these areas. It will also continue to invest in international research into type 1 diabetes.
Going forward, the foundation will offer fewer but larger regional grants – of between £250,000 and £500,000 over three years – and will no longer support applications related to animals, the arts, the environment, or promotion of religion.
It will consider grants from organisations with an annual turnover of between £300,000 and £5m, that aim to tackle the root causes of social disadvantage across three key themes: education, employment, and access to healthcare, housing or opportunities.
The grantmaker’s founder, housebuilder and philanthropist Steve Morgan, said: “I am proud and humbled at what we have achieved through the foundation over the past 25 years, but now is the time for meaningful change and a new strategic direction.
“We are committed to ensuring that the Steve Morgan Foundation delivers powerful and lasting change, starting now, investing £20m every year for the next five years.”
Past programmes from the foundation
Previous success stories include the Cradle 2 Career programme which was instigated by the foundation in North Birkenhead, and which is now being rolled out to five more communities with £5.25m funding from the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority.
This programme, which has been shortlisted in the Grantmaking and Funding category at this year’s Charity Awards, brought together Wirral Council and 43 local partners to deliver a radical new approach to working with local families.
The foundation has also funded the construction of new Maggie’s Cancer Centres in the Wirral and North Wales, and it committed £50m in 2022 to promising new breakthroughs in the treatment of type 1 diabetes.
The foundation has committed that any strategic partner grants, associate charity grants, regional or enable grants that have already been awarded will not be affected by the change in strategy.
Related articles
