Around 60 donors and supporters gathered on Zoom for our first ever online Giving Tuesday event. They heard from philanthropists who have chosen to support OCF, such as Will and Fran Perrin, about the importance of giving locally, and discovered more about our COVID response and strategic programmes.
Every pound donated up to £30,000 will be doubled to help disadvantaged communities improve children’s school readiness with our match-funding initiative on The Good Exchange. The match starts on Giving Tuesday and runs for the next 10 months.
OCF is initiating a new collaborative project that will get more people online by refurbishing devices, unlocking more data and connectivity, and upskilling beneficiaries. The Project Manager role will kick off the initiative, starting with a six-month contract from January 2021.
The report, created using needs analysis tool Local Insight, shows that unemployment in Oxfordshire has increased by over two-and-a-half times since March, over 76,000 jobs across the county are at risk after furlough ends, and 11,717 children were in low-income families before the pandemic hit.
After the initial shock of lockdown, families taking part in OCF’s Growing Minds early years programme are adapting to the ‘new normal’: social distancing, fewer face-to-face services, and rapid acceleration in the development of online services.
As the fallout of the pandemic becomes apparent, we have made three large grants from our Community Resilience Fund that aim to help local communities recover stronger.
Oxfordshire Community Foundation (OCF) is pleased to announce the appointment of Adrian Sell as CEO. Adrian was appointed Interim CEO on 1st July, taking on the challenge of leading OCF with a focus on using its Resilience Fund to help the voluntary sector in Oxfordshire respond better and recover stronger from the pandemic.
The Westgate Fund was established in 2017 with a £125,000 donation from John Lewis, and is held and managed by Oxfordshire Community Foundation (OCF). Since then it has funded 18 different community initiatives across Oxford.
OCF hosted a webinar this week, focusing on the opportunities to tackle homelessness, following the national ‘everyone in’ policy at the start of lockdown. The webinar, timed in the week of World Homeless Day, also looked at how the partners in Oxfordshire Homeless Movement are responding locally.
OCF has awarded grants, totalling over £58,000 and supporting nearly 32,000 people, as part of a funding round to support COVID-19 response and recovery. These grants, funded from our Community Resilience Fund, aimed to give smaller organisations vital funding as they continue to respond to the pandemic, or enter the recovery phase.