Milton Keynes Community Foundation Limited

Milton Keynes Community Foundation is an independent place-based funder with a mission to strengthen communities and improve quality of life by channeling philanthropic support into tackling disadvantage, building resilience, and fostering inclusivity across urban and outlying areas. Core values of FAIR—Fairness, Assistance, Inspiration, Reliability—drive grantmaking, emphasizing proactive needs identification through research like Vital Signs reports, equity in addressing poverty and marginalization, and partnerships empowering grassroots innovation. They believe lasting change arises from reliable support for community-led solutions, capacity building, and evidence-based interventions that inspire systemic fairness and local philanthropy.

They fund thematic priorities including strong communities through social inclusion and cohesion activities, tackling poverty and disadvantage via emergency hardship relief, food insecurity support, and family crisis interventions for those facing economic hardship; health and wellbeing services encompassing sight loss outreach, neonatal parent support bags, mental health counselling, and disability services for physical disabilities and complex health needs; diversity and marginalised communities via refugee and asylum seeker integration, ethnic minority engagement, and anti-discrimination programs; crime and safety initiatives addressing domestic abuse recovery and community safety; housing support preventing homelessness through winter survival provisions and housing insecurity aid; arts and heritage engagement via creative arts, cultural heritage preservation, and inclusive therapeutic activities; local environment projects promoting green spaces and sustainability; and economic resilience through youth employment training, skills development, and employability mentoring for young people. Supported activities span core costs for service delivery, project-based work like after-school clubs, peer support groups, respite care, advocacy, befriending, drop-in centres, and capacity building for voluntary sector organizations, sports clubs, and social enterprises delivering person-centred, community-led, preventative interventions for children and young people, elderly residents experiencing isolation, families caring for disabled children, homeless individuals, and vulnerable refugees.

They exclude statutory activities, religious promotion, retrospective costs, and non-inclusive faith-based work, prioritizing evidenced local benefit, inclusive mainstream services, and non-discriminatory approaches. Distinctive for deep commitment to Milton Keynes-specific urban-rural communities, research-driven responsiveness to emerging crises like cost-of-living challenges, preference for grassroots voluntary groups and smaller charities with lived experience leadership, and flexible multi-year strategic funding fostering long-term resilience over short-term fixes.