We recognise that the outbreak of Covid-19 is already having an immediate impact on the third and education sectors and on many of the individuals, organisations and schools we currently fund.

Our primary concern is for the health and safety of the public and the communities with whom we work, including the Foundation’s own staff and Governors, the staff, Trustees and volunteers of organisations funded by the Foundation, and ultimately the beneficiaries of our funding.

We are dedicated to looking at how we can best support the organisations we are currently funding and ensuring their survival and longevity throughout and beyond this crisis. We have already taken steps to reassure all of our grantee organisations that we will maintain the grants already committed, even if their organisational operations and programme delivery has changed as a result of covid-19.

We are having open discussions with all of our grantees about adapting activities, how best to adjust reporting requirements and what we can do to help. This is why we signed up to the London Funders pledge.

However, the Foundation’s funding is now under even more pressure than ever, and while the full economic impacts of covid-19 are not yet known, it is likely to significantly affect our future grant making. As such, the Foundation has taken the difficult decision to not accept any new, unsolicited applications at this stage while we assess the impact of the virus on the Foundation’s funding and prioritise working with the groups we currently support.

We appreciate that charities and other voluntary organisations are under immense pressure and now need funding more than ever. We encourage organisations to look at some of the emergency funding that has been announced, including the London Community Response fund and the National Emergencies Trust Covid-19 appeal.

We will update this webpage as soon as we are able to accept new applications. Thank you for your patience in the meantime.