When your company creates a fund through County Durham Community Foundation, you take all the hard work out of corporate giving. By partnering with us, you reap the same rewards as if you had set up your own trust via the Charity Commission, but without the heavy burden of administration and high costs.
We will establish your fund quickly and efficiently; we then manage, monitor and distribute grants to a host of great local causes on your behalf. You can entrust us to identify deserving local causes according your criteria, or you can specify causes where you want grants to be directed; these could be chosen by the company’s Board or nominated by employees.
Creating a named fund helps to fulfil your Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), build your brand ethos and values, and demonstrate these to your staff and customers. It establishes your reputation as a company recognised for its generosity and for its efforts to help others in the community.
Your fund will be listed on the County Durham Community Foundation website and we inform you every step of the way of where your cash is going and share stories of the groups and individuals that have directly benefited from your company’s generosity. What’s more, your organisation can easily re-define and continually update its preferences in relation to the causes that you would like to support.
Darlington Building Society are a great example of how a successful company uses a profit share model to give back totheir local community.
“The Society prides itself on sharing with our community. We want to be able to support local people by sharing with causes and organisations that make a real difference in the community.We invite our members to have a say in which types of causes receive our support and our sharing falls in line with what our members have requested. We thought there was no better way than to partner up with the Community Foundation who has so much experience in this field and help us to understand the impact our members are making to the community they live in.”
Caroline Darnbrook, General Manager (Customer Strategy and Delivery), Darlington Building Society
There are several ways to donate to local causes through corporate giving with County Durham Community Foundation. We explain some of the giving options available to you below.
Corporate Named Fund
A named fund created by an organisation can be given a name of the company’s choice. There are two types of named fund that your organisation can register with County Durham Community Foundation.
Creating a named fund can help you to build your brand ethos and values and demonstrate these to your staff and customers. It enables you to build a reputation as a company that gets recognised for its commitment to social responsibility and the local community.
When you set up a named fund with County Durham Community Foundation, you are removing the hard administrative work that comes with self-started giving. Instead, you can trust us to quickly establish your fund and manage, monitor and distribute grants at your discretion. Working with our team to handle your giving means you won’t need to create your own foundation leaving you with the time to take care of your business needs while still giving to your community. Of course, we report to all of our individual, group and corporate fund-holders regularly to update them on progress and share the stories of those that have directly benefited from their generosity.
Employee Giving Committees
Building an employee giving committee gives the people of your company a chance to have their voice heard and direct your donations to the causes they feel are the most worthwhile.
Involving your employees in the decision making process will allow them to feel valued by you and also serves as an employee-centred CSR initiative.
Whether you would like to regularly give to the same causes each time you donate, or if you’d like to rotate between causes, giving your employees a say in where the money is directed takes some of the pressure from you and enables them to put forward causes that they feel very passionate about.
Gift of Assets
Building an employee giving committee gives the people of your company a chance to have their voice heard and direct your donations to the causes they feel are the most worth while employee-centred CSR initiative.
You can also give donations in the form of assets as an alternative to – or support to – cash donations.
To learn more about this, head to our Tax-Effective Giving page.
Corporate Community Grants
A corporate social responsibility grant is the perfect way to give something back to your local community.
We work with a large number of developers, including property and wind-farm developers, as well as landfill operators to help them create a Community Benefit Fund in the area that they operate.
Creating a fund with your company as the namesake helps to build your public-spirited reputation, showing that you value and care about your local community and giving you recognition within your industry.
Cestria Community Housing set up a fund with County Durham Community Foundation in 2009 and were able to double the value of their fund through the Grassroots Endowment Challenge, a £1 for £1 match Government Initiative.
Cestria Community Housing
“This fund has been established to help small community groups gain access to additional funding and help them achieve their goals. We are delighted for those groups that are able to receive funding from us.”
Northumbrian Water has been involved with County Durham Community Foundation since we first began in 1995. They hold two endowment funds with us, the Northumbrian Water Community Endowment Fund and the Northumbrian Water Environment Endowment Fund.
“Northumbrian Water’s funds with County Durham Community Foundation represent an important part of our corporate responsibility activity. Because our people choose which projects to support, they can understand the importance of supporting grassroots community organisations for the long-term.”
Northumbrian Water
“This fund has been established to help small community groups gain access to additional funding and help them achieve their goals. We are delighted for those groups that are able to receive funding from us.”
County Durham Community Foundation