foundation

Northern Rock Foundation
Northern Rock Foundation was established in 1997 when Northern Rock plc converted from a mutual organisation. The plc donates 5% of its pre-tax profits annually, amounting to £134 million up to June 2005. The Foundation – which is an independent charity – is one of the country’s largest independent funders of charitable activity, and the biggest grant-maker in the North East. Its aim is to tackle disadvantage and improve quality of life. It offers funding for activities in Northumberland, Tyne and Wear, County Durham, the Tees Valley and Cumbria.

More information about the Foundation is available from:

Northern Rock Foundation
The Old Chapel
Woodbine Road
Gosforth
Newcastle upon Tyne
NE3 1DD

Telephone: 0191 284 8412
Fax: 0191 2848413
e-mail: generaloffice@nr-foundation.org.uk
Web: www.nr-foundation.org.uk

The Arts
Through its Aspiration grants programme, and its scheme for new or refurbished cultural buildings, the Foundation made a major contribution to the arts in 2005. Awards included:

Waygood Gallery Ltd : £350,000 towards the costs of transforming a city-centre warehouse and listed shop front in Newcastle into the largest artists’ studios in the region providing galleries and education resources.

Nexus: £100,000 to commission an artist to produce a new lighting scheme for the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge between Newcastle and Gateshead.

L’Afrique en Angleterre : £150,000 to develop African art and culture activities in the North East.

Dance City: £100,000 towards completion of the new purpose-built dance centre in Newcastle.

Bruvvers Theatre Company: £100,000 towards building a theatre in the round in Newcastle.

Northern Rock Writer’s Award
2005 was the fourth year of the Foundation’s Writer’s Award, which it runs in partnership with New Writing North. The Award – one of the largest for writing in the UK – is unique since it supports the creativity of the winner over three years, rather than being a retrospective prize for a particular work. The 2005 winner was Durham-based poet Gillian Allnutt who has published six collections, most recently, Sojourner (2004).

On winning the award Gillian said:

“What will I do with the money? I’m hoping to have a very restful year. I’ll be reading, writing and travelling. I don’t think this country has enough time for poetry any more. I plan to travel to places that do. Ireland… Eastern Europe… Germany. I have taught for many years and I am nervous about having a real break but I just feel it is the right thing to do.”

Heritage and the environment
The Foundation has supported several grants for environmental or heritage projects under its culture programmes:

Darlington Borough Council : £400,000 towards redeveloping Darlington Railway Centre and Museum.

The Environment Agency : £55,000 towards commissioning a sculptor to design an eye-catching flood alleviation scheme in Hexham, Northumberland.

The Vindolanda Trust : £100,000 towards the costs of building new facilities and increasing the number of visitors to the site in Northumberland.

The Foundation also supports local environment schemes, for example:

Community Environmental Education Developments: £113,032 to help residents in Sunderland improve their local environment.

Groundwork UK : £116,100 over three years to provide education on healthy living and the natural environment to under 5s and their parents in County Durham.

Funding for Communities
The majority of the Foundation’s grants go to organisations directly tackling social and economic disadvantage. The Prevention, Money and Jobs and Basics programmes deal with a broad range of issues, including prejudice and discrimination, the decline of decent community facilities, youth disaffection, employability, development of social enterprises, mental health, domestic violence and welfare advice.

The Exploration programme exists to enable groups to test out new ideas and ways of working. The Better Sector programme supports the capacity and effectiveness of the sector through training and support organisations. The following are some examples of grants made under these programmes in 2005.

Prevention
Newcastle Literacy Trust aims to improve the reading and writing skills of people in the city and surrounding areas. Its work includes helping parents to encourage the language and literacy skills of pre-school children, supporting young people not in education, jobs or training, including those excluded from school, and providing basic skills for adults for whom English is not their first language.

Poor literacy and numeracy is one of the main reasons why young offenders cannot gain training or employment and therefore fall into a cycle of further offending. In 2001 the Trust became involved in a mentoring scheme for young offenders in South Tyneside. The Foundation’s grant of £100,000 over two years will allow the Trust to expand the project into other areas.
Money and Jobs- New View
New View offers comprehensive job-seeking support for people in the Ford, Pallion and Millfield areas of Sunderland. It provides information on vacancies, CV compilation, help with letter writing, completing application forms and with interview techniques It also offers guidance and counselling, free postage and stationery, and access to telephone, internet and photocopying. It also helps with the costs of clothing, travel and childcare for people attending interviews, and with the costs of training.

Its shop is open Monday to Friday for people to drop in or make appointments. It has helped over 800 people into work, and supported the creation of 60 new businesses. The Foundation’s grant of £110,000 over three years will enable New View’s work to continue after the end of its current support under the Single Regeneration Budget.
Basics – Prism Arts
Prism Arts is the Disability Arts Agency for Cumbria, working to support and promote access for disabled people to creative arts activities in the county. It uses participatory projects, and runs awareness events and an advisory service, as well as offering performances, exhibitions and a free arts newsletter.

Following a conference held so that learning disabled people could say what involvement they wanted in cultural activities, Prism Arts has established a performance group – Starfish. The Foundation’s grant of £65,000 will allow this theatre group for learning disabled people to continue.
Exploration
Money Answers South Tyneside (MAST)
MAST is a new organisation set up to tackle the problem of financial exclusion. Many people living in disadvantaged areas do not have bank accounts, savings or insurance. They often turn to doorstep lenders who make credit conveniently available in cash, but at high cost – between 100 to 200 per cent APR.

South Tyneside Credit Union has been very successful, but as with all credit unions, its members must save before they become eligible for a loan. Households already in debt to doorstep lenders are often unable to join as they have insufficient cash to save.

The Credit Union has piloted a scheme with 57 households offering consolidation loans. These have replaced people’s existing high-interest debt with a much more manageable loan, resulting in weekly savings totalling £2,000. It is now intended to roll out the scheme through MAST, managed by South Tyneside Credit Union, which will allow it to work more flexibly.

The Foundation’s grant of £200,000 will provide the funds to lend, and support the scheme’s running costs. The work is still highly innovative, and its results should inform Government policy on financial exclusion, so there will also be an independent study by a leading expert from Liverpool John Moores University.
Better Sector
Retired and Senior Volunteer Programme (RSVP)
RSVP is a project of Community Service Volunteers (CSV), a national organisation that creates opportunities for people to become active in their communities.

RSVP focuses on people over 50, helping them to give their time and skills to support a wide range of projects. In the North East RSVP volunteers work from GP practices, day centres and schools.

The Foundation’s grant of £99,000 will fund a central office to support the volunteers, ensuring that their wealth of knowledge and energy is harnessed effectively.

Staff Match Giving
Since 1998 the increasingly enthusiastic and death-defying staff of Northern Rock plc have raised over £1.5 million for charities. Every £ donated by plc employees is matched by Northern Rock Foundation funds, leading to a grand eight-year total of over £3 million. From January 2006 the Trustees have agreed that for every staff £1, they will now give £2, meaning the charities concerned will receive three times the original amount raised or donated.

Some of the money comes from the Give As You Earn (GAYE) scheme by which many employees donate a regular monthly sum from their salary. This also attracts a small government subsidy as well as the Foundation's match so it is an excellent and tax-effective way to put money straight into charities. But by far the majority of the donations come from the fundraising efforts of staff members.

Each year seems to bring new forms of difficult physical exertion in the cause of an increasing range of charitable appeals. But the glamorous bike rides to exotic and tiring destinations, the abseiling down terrifyingly high buildings on windy days and the running in extreme cold and wet - not just on the day but in training too! - are only part of the story. Huge sums are raised by the more dogged and steady stream of jumble sales, bake sales and tombolas that characterise the British voluntary sector at its most local and most socially significant.

2005 also saw staff giving generously in response to the Asian tsunami through the overseas aid charity Y Care International. The charity that received the most money in 2005 was Macmillan Cancer Relief, which was the plc’s corporate charity for the year.

List of the Top Ten Staff Matched Charities in 2005
Charity Name	Total Amount Awarded £
*Macmillan Cancer Relief Corporate Charity 2005**	98,444
Y Care International	27,369
St Oswalds Hospice	15,823
NSPCC Northern Division	12,390
The Variety Club of Great Britain	10,500
Greenhouse Schools Project	10,375
Chernobyl Childrens Lifeline	8,181
North East Motor Neurone Disease Trust	6,411
Cancer Research UK	6,378
McCrory Foundation	5,250

Totals over the Past 8 Years £1,551,684