Not-for-profit cloud platform, The Good Exchange, has today announced the latest funder to be added to its platform: County Durham Community Foundation (Foundation). The Foundation is an independent grant-making charity, providing grants that make a genuine difference to the lives of local people. The Foundation manages charitable trusts donated by local individuals, families, businesses and trusts, and is dedicated to helping communities grow by creating opportunities and tackling issues of disadvantage and exclusion.

The main impetus behind the Foundation’s decision to run a pilot via The Good Exchange is to help it identify and therefore work with local charitable groups that may never have heard of the Foundation and also to provide an extra boost to the Foundation’s grants programme. The programme aims to provide grants of up to £5,000 to support charities, voluntary-led organisations and projects that have an incredible impact in their community, enabling them to continue their work and make vital improvements to their services. The Foundation funds a range of projects involving children and young people, the elderly, and people with disabilities, as well as projects in healthcare, arts and culture and the local environment.

“Our overarching aim is to support local charities and charitable groups – with the initial focus on the Good Exchange being to support children and youth groups – as well as driving collaboration between funders and charitable causes in our local area,” Michelle Cooper, CEO of County Durham Community Foundation. “Offering grant funding via The Good Exchange will enable us to reach new collaborators across the spectrum – from donors and fellow funders, to charitable organisations – and offer match-funding, incentivising further charitable giving. We hope to broaden our reach through the platform and would urge charities and organisations who share our objectives when it comes to supporting youth groups at a local level to register with The Good Exchange and join the growing online charitable community.”

“The County Durham Community Foundation is doing vital work in the local area, focusing particularly on supporting charitable groups aimed at helping children and young people,” said Ed Gairdner, COO of The Good Exchange. “We firmly believe that the key to success in charitable giving lies in collaboration, facilitated by technology, and hope to see other funders, charities and supporters in the local area registering with us and working together with the CDCF to make a real difference.

“We’re also thrilled to welcome the Foundation onboard as our first funder in the North East. Following the success our platform has experienced in the south of England, we’ve been aiming to expand our reach nationwide for some time, so this is a significant breakthrough for The Good Exchange. We look forward to continuing our work with the Foundation and hope to see new organisations join our platform both locally and regionally in the near future!”  

For more information regarding the Foundation and to register a fundraising project, visit their page on The Good Exchange’s platform here:  https://app.thegoodexchange.com/funders/10863/county-durham-community-foundation