Over its first two decades, The Foundation awarded close to 1,700 grants, distributing more than £19 million across five core funding programmes: Health Education, Relief of Sickness, Palliative Care, Medical Research, and International.
In April 2025, we took stock of our grantmaking strategy, paying particular attention to the evolving needs of the health charity sector, the urgent challenges facing service delivery charities – especially hospices – and the long-term financial sustainability of our funding model.
After careful deliberation, we chose to close our Medical Research programme, enabling us to dedicate more resources to charities that deliver a direct and immediate impact on individuals. At the same time, we merged the Health Education and Relief of Sickness programmes into a single
Physical Health programme. Recognising the increasing demand for mental health services, we launched a dedicated
Mental Health programme.
While we have historically supported a wide range of health-related charities – in both physical and mental health – this broad approach has become unsustainable. As a result, we have refined our funding priorities for the Physical and Mental Health programmes. We publish guidance about our funding priorities in each programme, but we warmly encourage applicants to reach out with any questions.
To ensure our grantmaking remains affordable and to respect applicants’ time, we have reintroduced a geographical restriction for our
Hospice Care programme (South West England and South Wales). Additionally, grants to our
International programme will now be made at the discretion of the trustees and this programme is no longer open to applications.
Please note that applications for the September 2025 meeting are being assessed according to the eligibility and funding criteria of our previous programmes.
