OCF’s staff and Chair spent last week at the UKCF Conference, joining 370 delegates from community foundations across the UK and world to share learning and knowledge, build networks and be inspired.
The Berin Centre is a new facility serving the village of Berinsfield, which houses many low-income families. The new centre is the culmination of a year of work by the community to replace and improve on services that were previously provided by the local government-funded children’s centre.
Representatives from community foundations across Europe chose to visit Oxford as part of a study visit to the UK. OCF arranged visits to several local projects we have funded, as well as a learning exchange session in our offices.
OCF has just opened the next round in our Delivering Impact grants programme, which will focus on alleviating poverty. We are seeking applications from groups working with the most deprived people in the county, such as homeless people, and will invest up to £10k.
Community foundations in Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Berkshire and Milton Keynes are working together to turn the proceeds of crime into grants that reduce reoffending, prevent social problems and build community resilience.
Today Comic Relief and community foundations across the UK announce a new £2 million investment into supporting small, community-led organisations, which will play a vital role supporting people to make positive changes in their lives and their local communities.
OCF has just published its audited accounts for the financial year 2016–17, which show that we made £847,017 in grants to 122 different charitable organisations. We also increased our donations by 24% by bringing in several important new partners.
OCF is seeking applications to the High Sheriff’s Community Integration Awards. The awards are grants of up to £5,000, given for work that brings together communities usually divided by ethnicity, age or social background.
The Good Exchange is an online platform that enables the auto-matching of grant applications to a funder’s specific grant giving criteria. Starting with a focus on homelessness, applications to OCF’s grants programmes will soon be automatically shared with other funders on The Good Exchange.
OCF’s June grants panel awarded 23 grants totalling nearly £38,000. Funding was directed to hard-to-reach young people and isolated elderly residents of some of the more deprived areas across Oxfordshire.