Our Trustees have been grappling with key questions about our role as a local funder:

• Where do we fit in the local funding landscape?
• What can we learn from our grantees?
• What kind of funder do we want to be?
• What is our understanding of local need and therefore our priorities?

As a part-time Clerk it has been personally challenging to facilitate these conversations AND continue our usual grant-making and operational management – which is why it has taken a while.  Though we have discussed some of these issues in the past, this is the first time we’ve been able to articulate them confidently enough to write them down.  So the outcome is a two-page strategy summary with our vision, values and our funding approach for 2024-2027.   In time, our website will be updated to reflect this.

A core aspect of the strategy was a review of our grant programmes.  We chose to sustain all our programmes as they provide different types of funding, following significant changes at our last review six years ago.  As that was the last time funding levels changed too, we increased the grant amounts for all of our programmes by 20%.

Small Grants – increased max from £3,000 to £3,600.

Project Grants – increased max from £10,000 to £12,000.

Community Investment Grants – increased from max £45,000 (£15,000 pa for three years) to max £55,500 (£18,500 pa for three years).

The new grant amounts will be available in Autumn 2024 when the grant application and assessment processes have been updated.