Business Grants, Support and Advice
:Birmingham Foundation
Page compiled the Heartlands Business Forum - supporting West Midlands Businesses

Contact:
email: team@bhamfoundation.co.uk
telephone: 0121 326 6886
web: http://www.bhamfoundation.co.uk

Birmingham Foundation, incorporating Heartlands Foundation, seeks to improve the quality of life of local people, by raising new charitable funds to support grass roots community activity.

Founded in 1995, as a direct result of work by the Lunar Society seeking projects that would address areas of poverty and regeneration, The Birmingham Foundation has become one of the growing number of Community Foundations establishing themselves throughout the UK.

OUR AIMS ARE…
*to help local people, provide local solutions through an effective grant-making programme in areas of poverty and deprivation;
*to stimulate new initiatives and partnerships within the community and to link these with the major regeneration schemes in the city;
*to build a long-term endowment fund for the sustainability of the communities within Greater Birmingham; providing support for many years to come;
*to provide people and businesses with the opportunity to maximise their charitable contribution in ways which bring genuine benefit to their local community.

With the support of businesses, individuals and through government funding, the Foundation has grown rapidly and during the financial year April 2001 - March 2002, the total amount of grants awarded to over 400 local community organisations was in the order of £1.4 million!

To generate sustainable support for future community projects, the Foundation is actively encouraging businesses to invest in the Endowment Fund and has set a target of £1 million by December 2003.

Match the Challenge!
In June 2002, our President Robert Taylor OBE KStJ, JP, Lord Lieutenant of the West Midlands received an unexpected but intriguing phone call.

The voice at the end of the line was proposing to invest £250,000 in the Birmingham Foundation's Endowment Fund. However, the caller not only wished to retain anonymity but also insisted on one vital condition: to receive this windfall investment, the Foundation had to match the amount through its own efforts by March 2003.

If you would like to help us to meet this challenge or would like to support the Heartlands Foundation (administered by the Birmingham Foundation) which was set up in 2000 to benefit community groups within the Heartlands area then please get in touch.

For further information please visit our website:
www.bhamfoundation.co.uk/newsfs.html or you can contact us via email: team@bhamfoundation.co.uk or via telephone: 0121 326 6886.

To the corporate investor, the Birmingham Foundation Endowment Fund emphasises the value of thinking ahead - capital invested contributes to the future of our community by producing income for today's projects and, importantly, tomorrow's.

To swell the Fund by £500,000 will grant the Foundation its long-term goal of a sustainable independent funding source; some grants we receive, although hugely welcomed, come with strings attached and can only be spent in prescribed areas.