School fundraising: Grant-making trusts

This article will focus on grant-making trusts as a key income stream for UK schools. Although many schools will not yet have made their first application to such trusts, as they often appear to be under the fundraising radar, some schools have managed to secure significant or even substantial funds from these often large funding bodies.

Indeed, there are many case studies showing how these funds have made a huge difference to schools and their wider communities.

One of the reasons that the work of grant-making trusts is not well known in many schools is that they do not, in the main, seem to readily advertise their funding schemes directly to educational organisations. Furthermore, for inexperienced fundraisers the formal application procedure and special vocabulary that such funders tend to use can be off-putting or even intimidating.