Are these UK trusts? Yes, they are all registered with the Charity Commission for England and Wales.
Why aren’t they in other directories? For various reasons. Some though registered for a number of years may only recently have become financially active, others may have changed their focus of activity from service provision to grantmaking and some have simply been overlooked by other researchers.
How have you discovered them? For the past 20+ years, we have been engaged in detailed research into trusts on the Charity Commission Register of Charities.
We get regular reports of all newly registered trusts. Are these all the same ones? No - half of the trusts featured in Invisible Grantmakers 2023 are seven years old or more (their average age is sixteen years). Importantly, although our lists will include selected newer grantmakers, we filter out the high proportion of newly registered trusts that remain very limited in the scale and scope of their grantmaking.
Are they too small to bother with? No – 60% of the trusts in Invisible Grantmakers 2023 have assets of over £1m or income of over £200,000 pa. The average level of grant distribution of these trusts last year was £180,000. Invisible Grantmakers reports identify a significant number of philanthropic high net worth trustees.
Are they narrowly focused in their giving? The majority of trusts featured are broadly discretionary trusts. Those with restrictions, either on the objects they can support, or on the geographical area of benefit, are included where we believe they will be of interest to at least a good proportion of users.
Our work is mainly conducted overseas - will these trusts fund us? Broadly half of the trusts featured in Invisible Grantmakers reports are either registered as giving for overseas work (in addition to work in the UK), or can be seen from their grant history to be supporting overseas causes. Trusts that only give overseas are only included exceptionally.
