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Our Charity Grant Making Foundation and Trust Survey invited charities to tell us what they most wanted from them, and to also rate the main grant makers based on the information and application process, and to nominate the grant making teams who are most helpful and supportive. Our findings are below and, as usual, we have inserted verbatim quotes from the charities to help to ensure their voice is heard.
This survey is incredibly welcome; I hope it results in real change in grantmaking practices because the amount of money wasted by applicants on unsuccessful and ineligible applications is a shame for the entire sector. It's important that grantmakers acknowledge that they can improve their practices and save literally millions of pounds to the sector collectively.
The purposes of this survey are to.
This survey is very apt and hits the nail on the head as to the improvements that could be made to the grant application process for funding that would make it more efficient and effective.Thank you
We asked charities to score each grant maker they had applied to, in terms of how useful they had found their information and grant application process from 1 (awful) to 10 (brilliant). These are the top 10 according to their ratings, of the 49 they were invited to score. These trusts and foundations have been given a Charity Excellence Grant Maker rating of 5 stars.
In my option Garfield Weston are the gold standard of supportive funders. They focus on unrestricted funding with the view that the charity is the expert and will know where to spend the money best. They are always available to talk to and their guidelines are very comprehensive.
| Grant Making Charity Foundation | Rating |
| Garfield Weston | 7.8 |
| National Lottery - Awards for All | 7.4 |
| Lloyds Bank Foundation | 7.1 |
| National Lottery - Other Grants | 7.0 |
| Community Foundations | 6.8 |
| Albert Hunt | 6.8 |
| Clothworkers' Foundation | 6.7 |
| Edward Gostling Foundation | 6.7 |
| Wolfson Foundation | 6.6 |
| Baily Thomas Charitable Fund | 6.5 |
More core costs funding please!
The 10 grant making foundations that charities felt had most opportunity to achieve more in 2025 are listed below. However, we would like to make clear that every grant maker who took part had at least 3 charities who rated them 10/10. And all have an opportunity to achieve more, as all had at least 5 charities that rated them 1 out of 10.
most funders do not give feedback so you do not know why you are unsucessful.
| Grant Making Charity Foundation | Rating |
| BBC Children in Need | 5.6 |
| Bank of Scotland Foundation | 5.5 |
| Barrow Cadbury Trust | 5.5 |
| Comic Relief | 5.5 |
| The Fore | 5.5 |
| Clore Duffield Foundation | 5.4 |
| Football Foundation | 5.3 |
| Gatsby Charitable Foundation | 5.3 |
| Sainsbury Family Trusts | 5.2 |
| Arts Council England | 4.6 |
We need core funding, and unrestricted grants. Please stop asking us to create/ describe projects when everyone knows that we're just repackaging the same activities year on year to fit the 'project' criteria. We're happy to ask for one year, but lets stop pretending that all charitable activites are new/ innovative. If something is working and making a diffreernce then why change it?
Funding for existing successful projects is increasingly hard to attain. Everyone appears to want to fund something new.
There isn't enough charitable funding and there isn't going to be but there are a range of steps that grant makers could take, either individually or collectively that could make a significant difference. Below is what charities told us they most wanted.
More funders could make their information clear, as in who can or who can not apply, an option to discuss a potential application or to email an idea would also be helpful to save wasting both parties time.
| Action | Average |
| More core funding | 9.2 |
| More multi year funding | 9.1 |
| More funders providing feedback on submitted applications | 8.7 |
| Sector standards to provide consistent, simple, clear application information | 8.5 |
| More funders willing to discuss applications | 8.4 |
| Shorter wait times between applications to a funder | 8.2 |
| Limit information required to minimum necessary | 8.1 |
| Funders more open in publishing grant making data | 8.0 |
| Greater willingness to innovate and take risks | 7.7 |
| Focus more on quality of proposals, less on existing relationships. | 7.4 |
| More funding for small infrastructure (support) charities | 7.3 |
| Able to submit multiple applications to a funder | 7.1 |
| Eligibility more open to other non profits - eg CICs, community groups | 6.2 |
We have received so many rejects because as a foodbank we really only need running cost. We can't run without electric, fuel, rent, insurance, and part time staff .
In small charities often it is someone with a very full and busy full-time job who is also doing the grant applications on top. Different organisations ask for different documents and figures and information at the first stage. It would be helpful if the process was the same for each funder and the documents/information asked for also the same.
Why it Matters
Presenting key information simply and clearly is always good practice but essential in grant making. Many infrastructure charities like ours and charities searching for grants are very small and hard pressed. Moreover, many of those searching may have little if any fundraising experience, English may be a 2nd language, or they may have low educational attainment, or learning difficulties or face accessibility challenges.
I work for a charity that has given me dedicated time to do applications so I dread how difficult it must be for smaller charities who are working with volunteers to do grant apps, the process is over complicated, incredibly time consuming and decision making is opaque or worse!
The Impact
The big charities with full-time professional fundraisers often know this information and not making it easily accessible significantly tilts the playing field against small and marginalised charities. Having key information clearly and simply presented in a standard way by all grant makers would help to counter this and would make everyone's life easier. In late 2024, the Barratt Foundation closed to new applications, after almost half of applications failed to meet its criteria.
Here's a message from a grant maker posted after they suspended their grant making.
'more details on new funding opportunities will be published in 2024 here.
Come back soon to find out more'
I emailed them in Oct 24 and having checked their website yet again in Feb 25, have deleted them from our systems.
How to Make Your Grant Making Fair for Everyone.
A bug bear - funders that say only small charities may apply but don't define a small charity for them. There is no accepted definition ie, under £100,000, under £300k, under £500k, under £1m - it can be any of these. You can waist time applying
Grant Information. Here's what really helps when providing grant detail.
........would suggest they want to shrink the sector overall. If so, maybe they should say so as we are currently scrambling for crumbs - the inequalities are only widening because of it. I personally have had enough.
We invited respondents to ignore whether their application was successful or not and nominate up to 2 funders for the Peoples' Choice Award for helpfulness, friendliness and effectiveness. We received more than 450 nominations for more than 100 charity foundations and trusts.
Lloyds - without a doubt. There enhanced support is worth more than their grant - core costs, fair monitoring, great overall support.
The very clear winner was Lloyds Bank Foundation for England and Wales, with 26% (19 charities) of those who had applied voting for them to be the People's Choice Grant Maker of the Year 2025.
Awesome communication from initial application through all stages to to delivery. Wider organisational support beyond the project work is committed, targeted and inclusive. Relational building both with 1-2-1 LBF personal funding manager AND in supporting partnership & connectivity within partnership project groups is like no other we've experienced. Other funders could learn so much.
But there were many other great grant making teams nominated too.
Runners Up were nominated by at least 12% of their applicants (between 6 and 32 votes).
Garfield Weston, The National Lottery, the Community Foundations (collectively), City Bridge Trust, the Tudor Trust and the Robertson Trust.
Highly Commended were nominate by at least 4% of their applicants (between 3 and 15 nominations).
GSR Foundation, Steve Morgan Trust, Henry Smith, Trust for London, Albert Hunt, BBC Children in Need, Awards for All, Paul Hamlyn, Childwick Trust, Wolfson Foundation, Rank Foundation, John Ellerman, the Clothworkers, Esme Fairbairn, Benefact Trust, Chalk Cliff Trust, Edward Gostling, Bernard Sunley Trust, The Leathersellers and the National Lottery Heritage Trust.
Our ratings were about the information provided and the grant application process and the People's Choice Award nominations were about the staff team. Bringing the 2 together, these were voted as the top 10 grant makers for 2025. Thank you on behalf of all of us.
| Grant Maker | Rating | People's Choice |
| Lloyds Bank Foundation | 7.1 | Winner |
| Garfield Weston | 7.8 | Runner Up |
| National Lottery - Other Grants | 7.0 | Runner Up |
| Community Foundations | 6.8 | Runner Up |
| National Lottery - Awards for All | 7.4 | Highly Commended |
| Albert Hunt | 6.8 | Highly Commended |
| Clothworkers' Foundation | 6.7 | Highly Commended |
| Wolfson Foundation | 6.6 | Highly Commended |
| Edward Gostling Foundation | 6.7 | |
| Baily Thomas Charitable Fund | 6.5 |
360Giving helps funders to publish and share their grants data using a standard format. t has 300+ funders.
Association of Charitable Foundations - Research and Resources.
Grant Adviser allows you to search for feedback from grantees/applications on a couple of dozen grant makers from well known ones with up to 100 reviews to very small ones with none.
Selection Process. We sought ratings for the top 50 grant making charities, excluding more niche funders, plus added in those whom we knew were popular and some who had different grant making approaches to see what the results might look like.
Survey Details. Responses were invited from mid Dec 24 to end Jan 25, via the Charity Excellence newsletter (80k subscribers) and widely on social media, not only on our own accounts but also in groups, plus thank you to those who shared the survey. We received at total of 322 responses.
Ratings. For the ratings, we used weighted averages.
Weighted average = ∑(weight × rating)/∑weight
People's Choice Award. Large grant makers that many respondents had applied to and could vote for would have had an automatic significant advantage over others, as they had many more potential voters, if we had just counted the votes. Consequently, we factored in voter numbers for each by calculating the percentage who voted for any given grant maker based on the total who could have. Where a grant making foundation was not in the ratings list (number of possible voters), they were included a a Runner Up/Highly Commended, where they had sufficient nominations to (in my view) merit inclusion.
2026 Survey. For 2026, grant makers who received a number of nominations in the People's Choice award will be included next year. The bands we have stablished for our star ratings and People's Choice Award will be kept the same as this year.
Conflict of Interest. No one funded this exercise but the GSR Foundation are by far our largest funder and Lloyds Bank made an unsolicited donation of £5,000 to us. Yes, I voted for both. No, I did not fiddle the figures in any way.
Our Expertise. I have been a volunteer for 40+ years and have done a lot of fundraising as a CEO, as well as having managed and significantly grown fundraising teams and I chaired a small grant making company for a decade. I also created the Charity Excellence grant makers module in the health check system and our grants directory (Funding Finder).
| The profile of respondents was very similar to previous surveys.
Respondents with income under £100k pa were significantly under represented. But the profile of those with income over £100k was representative of the charity sector overall. |
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The survey and reporting were carried out in accordance with the Charity Excellence policies on collecting and managing data.
A registered charity ourselves, the CEF works for any non profit, not just charities.
Plus, 100+downloadable funder lists, 60+ policies, 8 online health checks and the huge resource base.
Quick, simple and very effective.
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