The Charitable Trust was established in 1992 by the Oglesby family. The funding of the Trust comes from annual contributions from Bruntwood Limited, part of a group of North West based property investment companies owned by the founding Trustees that has a net worth of approximately £300 million. The Trust has been established to support charitable activities across a broad spectrum, and these reflect the beliefs and interests of the founding Trustee family.

The Trust income is currently around £750,000 per annum and grants each year will be made of around £600,000. To date, the maximum grant to any one project has been £60,000 in any one year and, generally, grants will be between £5,000 and £20,000. Since 2000, the Trust has made grants of approximately £3,500,000 and for the Financial Year, September 2009 – 2010, we are committed to spending £700,000. Please click here to download the latest set of accounts.

It is accepted that the Trust will be relatively modest in it resources and the Trustees will be looking to place funds where they can make a real and measurable impact. They acknowledge that there already exists a large number of charitable and government backed organizations operating across all fields and it is not the Trustees intention of compete with, or supplement, these. Although funding grants are made to organizations following unsolicited cold applications, increasingly these are reducing in number. The Trustees are now making the majority of their grants based on areas of direct interest into areas of need which they have personally identified. In order to avoid applicants wasting resources making cold applications when funding is limited for such causes we have endeavoured to summarise current fund availability in the ‘Eligibility’ section.

When appropriate the Trustees are looking to form associations with organizations over a number of years in order that a longer-term project can be supported and the Trustees can better understand an individual charity. A maximum of three years is normally placed on their associations to avoid the funding becoming core of an organisation’s activities.

To ensure that the Trustees can be confident that any donations awarded are making a real difference there is an application process that must be followed, and this is clearly outlined in the ‘How to Apply’ section of this site.

Please note we do not respond to applications, unsolicited correspondence or emails unless the appropriate application forms, details of which are found under the How To Apply section of this website, are enclosed.

The Trustees have worked hard to put together the Trust funds and, consequently, they expect recipients to understand their value and to extend a similar level of care in their use.

For more information on Bruntwood click on the link to take you to the website www.bruntwood.co.uk