We’re delighted to share our first ever Impact Review. Our hope is this review better showcases the work across our grant programmes – whether that’s restoring historic buildings or improving the mental health of young women. Below are five highlights from the review that best demonstrate the impact of our grantmaking.
1. Our grantmaking in numbers
Explore new infographics to see how our grantmaking in 2021 looks in numbers. For instance, a total of £2,883,674 was given across 71 grants and the infographic below shows how the grant amounts are spread across the UK:
2. Sustainable solutions for historic buildings are a growing priority
We gave £1,487,900 in grants to the preservation and conservation of historic buildings across the UK. Increasingly we are looking for projects where buildings at risk are given a new life through sustainable solutions – 11 of our grants focused on this and a third of all the buildings we funded were at risk.
Caption: Learn more about historic buildings and the Tarlair Lido (above) Case Study on page 5 of the Impact Review. Photo credit: CC by NC 2.0.
3. Improving the mental health of young women in the UK
This year we launched our new grants programme: Young Women’s Mental Health. Across 5 years, we will give a total of £5 million to charities across the UK that provide high quality, age and gender specific mental health services for young women (16-25). The review shares details on our first cohort of ten charities and how they are supporting young women within their communities.
Caption: Learn more about Young Women’s Mental Health programme and our first cohort like the Northern Ireland Youth Forum (above) on pages 12-15 of the Impact Review.
4. Continuing strong heritage partnerships
Working with expert partners to extend the reach of our funding is a distinctive feature of our work. These heritage organisations provide expertise alongside distributing our funds in grants and usually reach smaller organisations who cannot apply for larger funding and need early intervention.
Caption: Learn more about our heritage partners and projects like Archives Revealed (above) on page 16 of the Impact Review.
5. Supporting cultural heritage and conservation expertise
Another of our priorities is conserving the significant cultural heritage of the UK found in collections and objects, including paintings, museums objects, manuscripts and more. Our partners and us are seeing a growing need for smaller organisations to access conservation expertise to do this. We’ve found that small injections of money can leverage this conservation expertise and greatly improve collections care. For instance, in 2021, the vast majority of our grants in collections care were for less than £5,000.
Caption: Learn more about conserving collections and cultural heritage on pages 7-8 of the Impact Review. Above the Star of Bethlehem at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery.
We hope these five highlights have intrigued you to click and read our entire Impact Review – easily accessible below:
