Colefax Charitable Trust

The Colefax Charitable Trust, established in 1993, embodies a founding vision of fostering positive change through trustee-led discretionary grants to registered UK charities, hospitals, and schools, guided by public benefit principles and prudent stewardship of an enduring endowment. Core values prioritize sustainability, long-term impact, and flexible support for diverse charitable purposes, believing that trustee judgement enables agile responses to community needs, empowering operational charities via unrestricted core funding, capacity building, and project support to sustain direct service delivery and institutional resilience without rigid strategies.

As a generalist funder, it supports healthcare services in hospitals addressing complex health needs, physical disabilities, and patient care through operational enhancements; education in schools via core costs for children and young people, including SEND provision, after-school clubs, and skills training; arts, culture, and heritage initiatives featuring creative arts, therapeutic activities, and community cultural events combating social isolation; science and research projects advancing knowledge dissemination; and community development for local groups tackling poverty, family support, carer respite, youth employment barriers, elderly wellbeing, and social cohesion via peer support groups, outreach, drop-in centres, and inclusive activities. Interventions emphasize direct service delivery, preventative community-led approaches, holistic wellbeing, evidence-based operations, and capacity strengthening for grassroots charities serving families in crisis, disabled people, refugees, ethnic minorities, rural communities, and isolated individuals through counselling, mentoring, befriending, sports, and environmental action.

Exclusions encompass individuals, statutory bodies, and capital-heavy projects without operational impact; no support for duplicative services or national entities lacking local ties. Distinctives include quietly trustee-driven decisions favoring Wiltshire and South West communities—rural families, Swindon-area residents facing hardship—with occasional UK-wide reach for high-public-benefit causes like fact-checking; preference for established charities demonstrating sustainability, public benefit alignment, and measurable service impact over innovation or lived-experience leadership.