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Windsor & Maidenhead to Benefit from New Fund
The Berkshire Community Foundation is launched its latest ring-fenced fund at a champagne reception on 5th June in the historical royal residence of Cumberland Lodge, Windsor Great Park. The event, supported by the Mayor of Windsor and Maidenhead and former Lord Lieutenant and President of the Berkshire Community Foundation, Sir Philip Wroughton, hosted over 70 representatives from a cross section of local business, voluntary groups and other influential individuals.
The new Fund heralded a tremendous day for the Windsor & Maidenhead area. It will help to provide funding for many small local voluntary groups, which are finding it increasingly difficult to get funds from other sources.
In the last six months, Berkshire Community Foundation has issued over £25,000 in grants to local groups in the area, including Windsor & Maidenhead CAB, Friendly Bombs Theatre Company and 1st Sunningdale Scout Group. The new Fund comes at a time when many small voluntary groups are facing closure due to lack of funding. Small voluntary community groups are crucial in creating and maintaining the cohesion of communities and rely on funding predominantly from grants or donations to stay operational. To these small groups, a donation of as little as £300 can make a huge impact to the recipients.
The concept, like the Community Foundation itself, is to build a permanent source of funding for local groups, from which the interest is used to make grants. As the fund grows so it will provide more interest and thereby more grants. In essence it is building a legacy for Windsor & Maidenhead. However, the Fund will only work if the entire community gets behind it and gives it their support with companies and individuals committing to providing donations over the coming years.
The Fund has committed to raise £250,000 during the next three years to help meet that demand. President of the Berkshire Foundation, the recently retired Lord Lieutenant, Sir Philip Wroughton, highlighted Foundation’s success in having made a total of over £5million in grants since 1985. Despite this he stressed that there had recently been an exponential increase in demand for BCF’s grants from local groups. In response to this increase, Sir Philip, in a recent speech at a Duke of Edinburgh dinner at Frogmore House urged the audience to “….help in creating an ethos in the county of a community that helps itself and encouraging more local giving for local need”.
