Charitable Trusts


If you have the job of managing a Charitable Trust, we know how much work goes in to promoting, assessing, grant making and monitoring those funds.

Our staff can take on the processing and administrative side of grant making to allow you to concentrate on the decision making in line with the Trust’s aims and objectives.

Cumbria Community Foundation works closely with national and local charitable trusts to ensure funds are channelled straight to local communities in need.

The Foundation can offer a range of grant making services to existing trusts. This can be a fully supportive offering including all of the aspects below, or can just focus on one or more of these elements:

  • Designing the application process
  • Promoting availability of grants to the right target audience
  • Accepting the applications and carrying out due diligence
  • Producing papers for the panel
  • Providing administrative support in terms of making the grant payments
  • Monitoring progress
  • Providing an annual report on the impact of the grant making

Trustees can release the responsibility of managing and administering a trust fund directly, but retain an interest in the fund by acting as an adviser or continuing to award grants.

We can provide a range of solutions from assisting with grant making to taking over a trust completely.  We can assist with trust transfers, moving the funds into another endowed fund with up to date and appropriate objectives.

With active trusts, it may be that trustees are looking for a sustainable approach for their fund, to ensure that the excellent work they have undertaken for many years is continued in perpetuity without them losing involvement in the funds.  As an alternative to transferring a trust, we may also able to take over the management of active trusts, sometimes by becoming corporate trustees of a trust.

Trustees of charities and community groups facing closure may decide the work that Cumbria Community Foundation does to support local communities and individuals is in line with the aims of their group and that a transfer of funds to the Foundation would ensure a worthwhile and effective use of remaining assets.

We can often provide better returns on investments as we are able to pool larger sums of money which are effectively and prudently managed through appointed investment managers.

Our local expertise means that we can identify current social need and often find beneficiaries and causes that provide the 21st century equivalent of the issues the original trust was set up to tackle.

The Government’s Revitalising Trusts initiative aims to unlock £20m of inactive trusts through a partnership with UK Community Foundations and the Charity Commission. This initiative will provide a huge boost to local charities in Cumbria by distributing funds from inactive trusts to good causes.

Community foundations are an effective and sustainable option for revitalising trusts and keeping them working to support local projects. We have staff with the professional skills and local knowledge to take on the management of these trusts, so they can continue to provide funding for the long term benefit of local communities, as the trusts originally intended.

To discuss how your charity or trust can give through us, contact Andy Beeforth, Chief Executive on 01900 825760 or email andy@cumbriafoundation.org.