The Community Foundation for Shropshire

The Community Foundation for Shropshire operates across the ceremonial county of Shropshire, including Telford.  We manage grant programmes, hold a portfolio of endowments to generate future grants, and work with businesses and individuals who care about their local community and want to make a difference to the lives of local people.

There has been a community foundation in Shropshire since 2008, when the Telford Community Trust converted to become the Community Foundation for Shropshire, Telford & Wrekin.  Sadly, they were forced to close in 2012 due to external factors, creating a danger that people in the county could have been left without access to the support offered by a community foundation.  In order to avoid that, their work, including promotion and publicity channels and websites, were taken over by us at the Community Foundation for Staffordshire, and we began operating in Shropshire under the name of the Community Foundation for Shropshire.  The financial assets of the original community foundation were transferred to other local charities.  The transfers took a while to complete, but in 2016 we began to offer new grants.  Initially they were limited to a few centralised grant schemes that had been offered by central government, but over time this increased to include local grants funds and endowments.  In 2019 we took the decision to roll out the full range of community foundation services in Shropshire, to enable the VCSE sector to develop, grow and thrive.  In October 2020 we officially launched our increased offer at an event at Ironbridge.

As part of our development we established a sub-committee of people based in Shropshire that could help to steer our work.  As they didn’t have the grants management experience, but were very committed to wanting to see support for the VCSE sector in Shropshire grow, we agreed that they would focus on fundraising aspects.  The sub-committee eventually decided that they wanted to do things differently and broke away to become a separate organisation.  We agreed that they could still look after fundraising, whilst we would provide stewardship for those funds, which would sit in our investment portfolio.  We continue to manage grant-giving across the county, as well as centrally managed initiatives or local initiatives where the sub-committee (as was) feels unable to deliver.  We also directly manage some endowments where people want to work with us specifically.

As a recognised community foundation, successor to the original Community Foundation for Shropshire, Telford & Wrekin, and member of UKCF, we are keen to ensure that there is appropriate representation on our board, and in our governance structure.  In late Autumn 2023 we will be opening our trustee recruitment round.  We are particularly keen to ensure that we engage and involve people who are representative of the communities we serve.  Keep an eye on our social media channels, and this website, to learn more.