Charitable Trusts & Foundations

Community Foundation for Lancashire offers a variety of ways for charitable trusts and foundations to give to local groups and individuals in a focussed, strategic and philanthropic way.

We are able to assist trusts in the administration and management of their funds and their grant making, and can also provide the opportunity for trusts to establish an endowment fund to ensure that future generations are supported and grant making will continue in perpetuity.

Boost Initiative

Community Foundation for Lancashire is an associate of a national project called the Boost Initiative (www.boostinitiative.org.uk). The aim of Boost is to unlock dormant, inactive or ineffective charitable assets, and enhance the impact of these assets for the benefit of people and communities across the UK. The Boost Initiative is based on a protocol that was created between the Charity Commission and Community Foundation Network to reactivate and release funds that are tied up, to be used more effectively in local communities.

There are various reasons why a trust may be unable to use its funds as effectively as possible:

• Objectives of the trust may be outdated and no longer meet the original requirements of the benefactor
• Trustees lack the skills, resources or time to administer the fund effectively
• Trustees may lack the local knowledge required in grant-making
• Trustees see the trust as an administrative burden

Community Foundation for Lancashire is ideally positioned to assist trusts and foundations experiencing problems such as these, due to our expertise in fund management and the disbursement of funds and grants, our experience in holding endowment funds, and our unrivalled local knowledge. By working with trusts and foundations that may be experiencing difficulties we are able to ensure that their assets are used as intended and benefit local communities.

Charitable trusts and foundations and Lancashire Grassroots Endowment Challenge

Until March 2011 charitable trusts and foundations struggling to operate and distribute grants, or who wish to modernise themselves, can benefit from the ‘Lancashire Grassroots Endowment Challenge', in which there is the opportunity to get a free contribution of £1 for every £1 donated in endowment by private donors for local causes.

Contributions or transfers from trusts can count towards the Endowment Challenge where the local trust can demonstrate that this is a significantly better use of the resource available, and will result in better long-term benefits for grass roots groups e.g. because they can provide a higher rate of investment return, or better engagement with the needs of the local community.

For more information on how your trust or foundation can work with Community Foundation for Lancashire please contact -

Karen Fitzgerald
Development Director
karen.fitzgerald@lancsfoundation.org.uk