The Veterans’ Foundation was launched in July 2016 and since then, it has handed out over 1000 grants to nearly 450 different organisations, totalling almost £21 million. A truly incredible milestone.
Most of this money has been raised through subscriptions to the Veterans’ Lottery, but a growing proportion comes from donations and funds raised by our terrific supporters.
The £21 million has made a significant difference to charities and charitable organisations helping former and serving armed forces personnel and their dependants, some details of which you can see here:
In the last week, the VF’s Trustees have approved another set of quarterly grants amounting to £1.7 million.
To give readers a feel for what some of these grants will be helping with, here are three summaries:
One grant will go to Shared Parenting Scotland to pay for the salary of someone who works specifically with armed forces families going through separation and divorce, supporting them as they move towards shared parenting and beyond.
The Soldiers of Oxfordshire Museum will receive a grant to do three things:
1) The Trust will run a 10-week course each year for two years, working with the charity Outside In. Outside In provide a platform for artists who encounter significant barriers to the art world due to health, disability, social circumstance or isolation. The course will focus on creating artwork, training in exhibition and curation skills, with the final aim being to create an exhibition.
2) To run a monthly Veterans’ Drop-In at the museum, and
3) to deliver a Veterans' Outreach Programme.
The last example of a grant awarded this quarter will go to the charity Ashes to Gold. The VF grant will fund costs to deliver "The Giants’ Retreat" which is a project designed to deliver fully-funded and supported activity-based breaks at Moorbrook Lodge for families and single adults from within the armed forces community in Northern Ireland through the spring, summer and autumn of 2024.
We are also making some significant changes to our grants: creating Major Grants of £100K or over to help development and growth in good organisations, as well as providing Small Grants, up to £5K, for small unincorporated organisations.
The Small Grants will probably be ideal for Drop-In Centres and Breakfast Clubs, so if you know of an organisation such as that, please invite them to apply for a grant when the programme goes live in the next couple of months.
The Fundraising Regulator has recently published a report into the use of face-to-face fundraisers, such as people who represent charities in shopping centres, shows and motorway services. We will be taking a keen interest in that report and the subsequent guidance to ensure we live up to the good standards recommended within it.
Finally, we have formed a partnership with the Defence Infrastructure Organisation (DIO).
The employees of the DIO are enthusiastically fundraising for the Veterans’ Foundation and our grantees - so a huge thank you to everyone in the DIO and I look forward to the stories of fundraising activities in which you take part.
If YOUR employer might like to join us in a similar scheme, please do not hesitate to contact us - find out more below:
Thank you for all your support of the Veterans’ Foundation, enabling us to help those people in the armed forces community (serving and veteran) who are in need.
