Lloyds Bank Foundation for England & Wales has pledged to offer longer, unrestricted grants to small charities, and will boost its workforce by 50 per cent.
The Foundation, which mainly funds organisations with an income of less than £1m, published its new strategy for the next five years today, and includes a pledge to offer more charities it funds six-year grants with a break clause after the third year.
It says the Foundation will fund 700 charities at any one time until 2022 and will increase the size of its largest grants to £200,000 over their six-year duration. It will aim to offer charities unrestricted grants where possible.
The Foundation also aims to boost its additional support for the charities that it funds, which will include an expansions of its mentoring scheme whereby members of Lloyds Bank plc volunteer their expertise to grant receiving charities.
It will also continue its advocacy work, with a particular focus on producing research and campaigning for policy changes on behalf of small charities.
Expansion
Speaking to Charity Finance magazine, chief executive Paul Streets said the Foundation would expand its workforce from about 32 to just under 50 over the next two years.
Streets said it is unlikely any of the new staff will work on the organisation’s primary function of grant-making, as this is already well resourced. Instead the new staff will work on the Foundation’s advocacy and additional support work.
He said: “Our policy work we are going to beef up a bit, because it has worked, so we are going to increase a little bit of that resource. The biggest area of expansion is around our development work, which sits alongside the grant, because that is quite powerful and appears to be of quite high value to the organisations we fund.
“So we are appointing a development director, who comes from a local authority background but has worked with small charities too. Her job will be to come in and think through how we help organisations become more sustainable.”
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