Grant making trusts

Fact sheet two

The Charity Commission

The primary source of information about grant making trusts is the Charity Commission. There are around a quarter of a million charities registered with the Charity Commission, of which we think some 20,000 are grant-making trusts. Details of all registered charities are held on the Charity Commission's central database, which is now accessible on the Internet.

Using the Charity Commission database

Although good research has been carried out to produce the main directories, especially the books published by the Directory of Social Change (see details under Sources), any publication necessarily goes out of date - and increasingly so as time passes.

Furthermore, since only a fraction of the existing grant-making trusts are listed in any of the main directories, it makes sense to learn how to use the database at the Charity Commission. There is no charge for using the research facilities, and there are public terminals in each of the three main offices in London, Taunton and Liverpool.

Using the research facilities at the Charity Commission

You have the choice of two research routes:

a) The database

This provides a summary of information on all the charities registered with the Commission and is useful in identifying potential new funders which are not listed in any of the main directories. The main searches are described below.

b) The original files

These are the paper files which record the annual accounts of each registered charity. They are an invaluable source of information on potential funders - provided that the trust has complied with the law and sent in annual reports and accounts, and that individual grant awards are recorded rather than just a non-descriptive total.

It is a requirement of the law that any registered charity must supply its latest annual report and accounts upon request - although a small charge to cover costs may be raised. So if you are only interested in researching a few charities, perhaps the quickest route would be to gain the correct address and contact name from the database and then ring or write to request a copy of the report.

The database searches

a) Locating a charity by name

This search is used to identify details in a case where you are unsure of the whole name of a charity and want to verify this and other information; or when you have identified a wealthy individual and want to discover if s/he has endowed a grant making trust. There are two main searches you can make:

Whole Name
Keyword

If you choose to search by Whole Name be warned that the database can only cope with the exactly correct name. In other words, it will not recognise "The Gulbenkian Foundation" - you must key in "The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation".

It is recommended using the Keyword facility, especially if you have a nice unusual keyword like “Gulbenkian” can save a lot of time. There are drawbacks to the keyword search though. It will not search on initials (so no chance of finding anything containing TSB, for example), nor will it search on titles (so you can't do a keyword search for Lady Anne Somebody). And one more word of warning: do not use the keyword search on really common names like Smith or Brown - you'll wait all morning for the thousands of entries to be displayed. Other names to be avoided are Hall (every village in the country has a Hall) and, for the same reason, Green.

b) Locating a charity by registered number

Obviously this search can be used when you know the registered number of a charity and want to check other details, such as name, income and so on.

c) Locating a charity by object code

For researching potential funders for a specific cause, this is by far the most useful search since it allows you immediately to isolate grant makers with a particular interest in your kind of project. Please note though, that grant makers with very particular object codes very often already fully support one particular charity and may not necessarily be open to approaches from you.

d) Locating a charity by location

You may undertake a search by location on the database, which can be as narrow as an individual parish. Please note that his facility has a limited value to grant seekers with a national or international remit since the search will only reveal charities with an area of benefit corresponding to the location, and not charities with an address in the location. So, for example, a location search of the parish of Clifton, in Bristol, would reveal all the parochial funds such as St Michael's Church Fellowship, but would not show a useful grant making trust such as The Lalonde Charitable Trust.

These descriptions of the database searches are necessarily brief because the best use of any computer is by practical, hands-on experience. You will learn more quickly about these functions when you are practising them yourself, and the database is very user-friendly and simple to operate once you understand the searches you can make and the limitations of the software. There are six public terminals in London, six in Liverpool and three in Taunton.

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