The Community Foundation in Wales offers a flexible, efficient and cost-effective alternative to establishing a Charitable Trust, services to grant-making Charitable Trusts and Foundations, and a trust transfer service, working in partnership with the Charity Commission.


Services to grant-making Charitable Trusts and Foundation

We distribute funds on behalf of a range of Charitable Trusts which appreciate our knowledge of the voluntary sector in Wales, our robust assessment and monitoring of grants, and our evaluation and reporting mechanisms. With our local knowledge and experience of grant-making and community development in Wales, the Foundation is uniquely placed to offer other Charitable Trusts a comprehensive and tailor-made grant-making service.

Options include:

• Commissioning us to source and assess applications to present to your charitable trusts’ grants committees
  
  
• Asking us to assess and evaluate applications received by your Trust, and then to administer the grants, monitoring and evaluation
  
  
• Contracting us to visit projects you have supported, to monitor and evaluate the impact of the grant
  
  
• Making a one-off or annual award to the Foundation, which is ring-fenced and distributed in accordance with agreed criteria
  
  
• Making a gift of capital to the Foundation, which is held in a ring-fenced invested fund. The capital and interest can either be spent over a number of years (an expendable endowment) or it can be held in perpetuity, where only the annual interest is used (a permanent endowment)
  
  

“With a London base, we greatly value the Community Foundation in Wales’ knowledge and expertise of Welsh charities, and of local conditions. They provide an excellent visiting and assessment service on our behalf, ensuring our face-to-face grant-making penetrates across Wales.”

AF-H, HS Charity.

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Trust transfer services

The Community Foundation in Wales has a strong track record and expertise in supporting trustees of grant-making charities to transfer their assets to the Foundation, ensuring that the original objectives of the philanthropist who established the charity are met and relieving them of the burden of trust administration.

Transferring charitable assets to The Community Foundation in Wales is of particular benefit in any of the following circumstances:

• The trustees are no longer alive and the trust is dormant (usually administered by a solicitor or accountant, or one remaining trustee/secretary/clerk)
  
  
• The trustees wish to retire from their responsibilities and are finding it difficult to recruit new trustees to take on the administration
  
  
• The trust is inactive/dormant
  
  
• The trust is not complying with Charity Commission reporting regulations
  
  
• The trustees recognise that the assets could be invested more fruitfully
  
  
• Grant-making is limited or non-existent, and no monitoring or evaluation of grants is taking place
  
  
• The trustees appreciate that The Community Foundation in Wales could relieve them of their responsibilities whilst honoring the original trust objectives, releasing funds for charitable purposes and adding value through leverage of its other Funds and strategic grant-making programmes
  
  

Through working closely with the trustees and their advisors, and thanks to an excellent partnership relationship with The Charity Commission, the Foundation makes the transfer of charitable assets to our stewardship a straightforward process. Our strong track record in this undertaking (we have received over £3 million of charitable assets transferred by dormant or under-active grant-making trusts), means we can support trustees and their solicitors/accountants throughout the process, for example in recommending wording for resolutions and liaising with the Charity Commission.

We are keen to honour the wishes of the founding philanthropists and former trustees, and where appropriate happy to involve them in future grant decision-making and report to them annually. Our management fee charges offer excellent value for money (typically 3% of the capital sum on transfer, plus 1.25% annual management fee charge and 10% of the annual grant-making sum).

“The Community Foundation in Wales has a great reputation for its effective management of charitable funds.  We work closely with them to advise on the legal procedures that would enable trustees, including local authorities, to entrust their charitable funds to the Foundation in order to maximise their impact at a local level"

Harry Iles, Head of the Charity Commission in Wales