Trusts and foundations fundraising is a vital income stream for The Christie Charity. Throughout our long history, grants and donations from charitable trusts and foundations have supported our research programmes, capital developments (including creation of state-of-the-art treatment centres), and a whole range of support care services designed to help patients and their families cope with the impact of a cancer diagnosis in their daily lives.
There are many charitable trusts and foundations in the UK as well as ones based internationally. At The Christie Charity, we have long-standing relationships with a number of trusts and foundations who give to us on a regular basis, and we are very grateful for this. We’re also looking to partner with new trusts and foundations that are aligned with our aims.
There are many different types of trusts and foundations. These include large national ones which typically have significant grant budgets and structured application processes requiring detailed proposals and evidence of impact, as well as more medium and smaller sized ones that are often family-run or locally focused and are more flexible in their funding processes. In addition, a number of corporates have their own foundations linked to their business and fund projects aligned with their corporate social responsibility goals, often with an emphasis on community impact or employee engagement.
One recent trusts and foundations gift we received is set to accelerate world-leading research into rare abdominal cancer at The Christie hospital. Pseudomyxoma Survivor awarded £100,000 to The Christie Charity towards the development of a highly sensitive blood test for detecting pseudomyxoma peritonei (PMP) and will be one of the first of its kind globally.
Scientists hope to detect even the smallest traces of PMP in a patient’s blood meaning the disease can be caught and treated before it spreads. Thanks to Pseudomyxoma Survivor’s funding, researchers will be able to analyse tumour samples from PMP patients. This will allow future blood tests to personalise monitoring for patients, improve treatment paths and the outlook for those impacted by this rare cancer.
Trusts and foundations fundraising is an area that we would like to grow and diversify over the next few years. In the last financial year, we received 53 gifts trusts and foundations supporting 16 projects, a third of which were repeat gifts.
If you represent a charitable trust or foundation and wish to support us, please get in touch with Trusts and Foundation Manager Vafa Shahi on 0161 446 3988 or at vafa.shahi@nhs.net