Income and Grant-Making Aims and Objectives

The Trust Deed contains broad charitable objects which allow the Trustees, in their discretion, to pay or apply the income and, subject to the restrictions set out below, the capital of the Trust Fund to or for the benefit of any charitable bodies, trusts, associations, institutions or organisations.

This year, the Trustees have supported a record number of appeals (1,982 out of a total of 4,050 applications. Despite an increase of over 10 per cent in the Foundation’s distributable annual income for the year (£35.9m as compared with £32.4m in 2006), the Trustees have once again relied upon their income reserves to make grants totalling £41.7m (£38.4m in 2006). The grants made, as usual, support a wide range of charitable activities with 1,674 (84 per cent) of them being for £20,000 or less. The number of applications and appeals supported have increased by around 30 per cent and, apart from the relatively small number of seven figure grants which the Trustees have made to projects of national significance, the Trustees have made a conscious effort to reduce the level of each of the larger grants which they have made in order to be able to support the widest range of charitable causes.

This year has seen a marked increase in the number of grants in the ‘Community’ category, recognising the important impact which local projects can have in today’s society for a relatively small cost. For the second year running by far the largest amount of grants in terms of value were in the Education category, including a lead grant to the National Museums Liverpool. After twelve years of supporting the Specialist Schools Trust (with grants totalling £10.2m) the Trustees decided that they had given sufficient funds to that particular body, but they have continued to provide strong support of secondary and higher education with grants to individual city academies, technology colleges and universities.

For more details of the various grants made please see the ‘Grant Activity’ section of this Report.

Grant making policy
The Foundation continues to accept only appeals from UK registered charities. No applications from individuals are considered. The Trustees aim to deal with each application within four months of its being received. All applications are considered on an individual basis and, whenever it is considered necessary or desirable, visits are made by Trustees and/or the Foundation’s Administrator in order to gain a better understanding of applicants’ requirements. Regular contact is maintained with recipients of grants for monitoring purposes, including follow-up visits. A copy of the grant-making guidelines, which includes the criteria which are taken into consideration when assessing applications, is available on the Foundation’s website (www.garfieldweston.org) or from the Foundation’s office on request.