The Foundation was established in 1971 by the late Sir John Ellerman. It is a general grant-making trust distributing over £5 million each year. The Foundation aims to support a broad cross-section of national charities doing work in the following 5 categories (please see the detailed guidelines for each category):

Health and Disability

Social Welfare

Arts

Conservation
(UK and/or International)

Overseas
(in collaboration with the Baring Foundation. All applications to Barings)


The Foundation will only consider applications from registered charities with a UK office. Our resources allow us to give significant grants which we hope will enable charities to make a difference to the cause they serve. Our minimum grant is £10k. We aim to develop relationships with funded charities.

Requests for a contribution to large capital appeals are not encouraged. We will only support Health and Disability, Social Welfare and Arts charities working throughout the UK or England. We believe other trusts and funders are better placed to help individuals and/or local and regional charities. For this reason:

Applications from individuals, local/regional charities or those just operating in Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland will NOT be considered.

We know core funding is difficult to obtain and are especially open to receiving applications for this purpose. Charities which receive core funding will be expected to account for expenditure and identify what it has enabled them to do. We also incline towards supporting charities which:

• Offer direct practical benefits rather than work mainly on policy or campaigning
• Involve and attract large numbers of volunteers
• Co-operate closely with other charities working in similar or related fields
• Do innovatory work
• Are small or medium sized (annual income less than £25m)

Because of the volume of appeals which we receive, the Trustees do not consider further requests from charities which have had an application turned down until at least two years have elapsed since the letter of rejection. Similarly, funded charities can expect to wait two years from the last grant payment before a further application will be considered by Trustees.