Working with Existing Trusts and Foundations
Community Foundations are ideally-placed to support larger trusts with their local grant making. Kent Community Foundation already delivers ongoing local grant making programmes for larger funders such as Fidelity UK Foundation and The Brook Trust.
An important advantage of working with a Community Foundation is the level of control and decision making that our Fund holders are able to retain, whilst taking advantage of our expertise in grant making and local knowledge. Fund-holders stay fully involved in how, where and when their funds are spent in the community.
We are experts in local community need, having given out more than £31million in grants to thousands of organisations across Kent and Medway since 2001, and can offer a range of options to meet the needs of your clients. We are a donor-led organisation, so we respond to the needs and charitable goals of our donors.
If you are a national grant-making Trust who has an interest in Kent then please do get in touch as we may be able to provide a cost effective solution to delivering your local Kent objectives.
Trust Transfer
Trust transfers might particularly benefit local grant making trusts that trustees are finding difficult to manage. They may be struggling to make effective grants locally, the administrative duties might have become too much of a burden, or perhaps they are having difficulty recruiting new trustees. Or it might be that trustees are simply looking for an efficient and sustainable way of ensuring that the excellent work of their Trust and its charitable purpose is continued in perpetuity. Trustees can stay fully involved as advisors, recommending future grants, if they wish, while handing over the legal responsibility of managing the trust to the Community Foundation.
Kent Community Foundation is also able to draw on the collective experience of UK Community Foundations to provide guidance and support every step of the way to trusts wishing to consider transferring responsibility.
Dormant Trusts
UK Community Foundations have enjoyed significant success in revitalising Dormant Trusts. So much so, that the Charities Foundation issued a statement approving of our activities. The Charity Commission acknowledges that community foundations have a reputation for the effective management of charitable funds in order to maximise their impact at local level.
The Charity Commission and community foundations have worked closely in recent years to ensure that trustees seeking to revitalise moribund (dormant) or ineffective trust funds (and who are looking for an effective way of carrying on their good work in future years) can release their funds to a community foundation as part of their appraisal of options.