NORTHERN ROCK FOUNDATION ANNOUNCES GRANTS TOTALLING £1 MILLION, AND PLANS TO INCREASE EXPENDITURE IN 2008.
15 organisations across North East England and Cumbria will receive grants totalling £1,027,486 in the Foundation’s first grants round of 2008. The Foundation’s Trustees have also decided to increase their grants budget by at least £4m this year to a minimum of £11m, pending further consideration of their priorities. A full announcement about how the increased funds are to be allocated will be made in May.
In this round, the Foundation’s Trustees have invested £0.33m in services for people with mental health problems, people with learning disabilities, older people and carers. Among the recipients are projects using drama and the arts to improve quality of life for older and learning disabled people, and a charity providing practical and emotional support for people with autism and their carers.
The Trustees invested another £0.32m in projects providing one-to-one help for young people at risk, homeless people, substance misusers and groups that face prejudice and discrimination. The activities supported include a scheme to help homeless people secure rented accommodation, a service which helps parents of drug users and an organisation providing one-to-one support for young people in and leaving care.
Under their priority of reducing the incidence and impact of domestic and sexual violence, abuse and hate crimes, the Trustees made grants totalling £0.27m for a rape crisis centre, for research into victims of trafficking and for an education project designed to prevent racist hate crime. The Trustees spent a further £0.1m on training and development activities for the voluntary sector.
Alastair Balls, Chairman of Northern Rock Foundation, said: “The Trustees are very pleased to make these two important announcements – our first grants of 2008 and an increase in our spending for the year ahead. Last autumn, we took the difficult decision to scale back our programmes, and we set an initially cautious budget for 2007 of £7m. We now know that there will be a continued donation from Northern Rock under its new ownership arrangements; this is excellent news which means we can increase our grant-making plans, initially by a further £4m. We will announce how that additional funding will be allocated in May. In the meantime, we continue to tackle disadvantage through our investments in the hard work and creativity of voluntary organisations throughout our region.”
Full list of grants approved in March 2008
Organisation |
Amount |
Description |
Area served |
Tyneside Rape Crisis Centre |
126,224 |
Towards the costs of providing services for victims of sexual violence. |
Tyne & Wear |
Equal Arts |
90,000 |
To improve the lives of older people through engaging them in high quality arts projects. |
North East |
Parents in Need of Support |
87,000 |
To tackle substance misuse by supporting parents of users. |
Hartlepool |
African Community Advice North East |
86,260 |
To expand the one-to-one support provided to individuals from African communities new to the area. |
Tyne & Wear |
Barnardo’s |
80,020 |
To undertake research on young victims of internal and external trafficking. |
North East and Cumbria |
Derwentside MIND |
79,109 |
To support people with mental health problems. |
Derwentside |
Care In Durham |
66,276 |
To provide one-to-one support for young people in and leaving care. |
County Durham |
Headway Theatre |
62,540 |
To run the Seven Stars Theatre for learning disabled people, based in Blyth. |
Northumberland |
Show Racism The Red Card |
61,000 |
For education work to prevent racist hate crime. |
North East |
The Learning Team |
60,000 |
To provide support and development to voluntary organisations experiencing difficulties. |
North East |
The Botanic Centre Middlesbrough Limited |
55,000 |
For a programme of support, training and work experience for volunteers with mental health problems and learning disabilities. |
Middlesbrough |
Laurel Avenue Community Association |
50,500 |
Towards one-to-one work with disadvantaged young people. |
Durham City |
Daisy Chain Project (Teesside) |
45,000 |
Towards providing practical and emotional support for people with autism and their carers. |
Tees Valley |
Community IT Academy |
42,557 |
Towards providing IT support to organisations working in the North East. |
North East |
DiGS (Cumbria) Ltd |
36,000 |
Towards the costs of an accommodation deposit guarantee scheme for homeless people operating across Cumbria. |
Cumbria |
Northern Rock Foundation is a charity and company limited by guarantee with an independent Board of Trustees that makes all decisions on governance, finance and policy. The Foundation aims to tackle disadvantage and improve quality of life in North East England and Cumbria. To do this, it invests money, time and expertise in charitable activities using several tools including grants, loans, training, research and demonstration work. The Foundation’s work is delivered by a professional staff team of 13 based in Newcastle upon Tyne.
The Foundation was established when Northern Rock demutualised in 1997. Up to December 2007, the bank gave, by covenant, 5% of its annual pre-tax profits to the Foundation, totalling more than £190 million. The Foundation will receive a minimum of £15m a year in 2008, 2009 and 2010 from Northern Rock, as part of the arrangement under which the bank was taken into temporary public ownership. Maintaining this arrangement is a condition of any sale of the bank in that period. The Government has asked the bank’s board to identify a viable long-term future for the Foundation.
For further information visit:
http://www.nr-foundation.org.uk/