Ostrich Charitable Trust

The Ostrich Charitable Trust is a family-led philanthropic entity founded by the Strauss family, dedicated to advancing diverse charitable causes through flexible, discretionary grantmaking that responds to societal needs with agility and foresight. Core values emphasize discretion, responsiveness, long-term stewardship, capital preservation, and maintaining reserves for sustained impact, believing positive change arises from trustee-guided support to institutions addressing emergent challenges. Their philosophy prioritizes broad societal benefit via partnerships with charities delivering core operations, capacity building, community empowerment, and innovative interventions fostering equity and resilience.

They support a wide spectrum of charitable activities across health services including mental health counselling and complex health needs support, education initiatives like SEND provision and youth employment training, welfare programs addressing poverty alleviation, family carer support, homelessness prevention, and social isolation relief through befriending and peer support groups, arts and cultural projects such as choirs and creative therapies, religious community services including synagogues and faith-based welfare, disability interventions encompassing respite care, therapeutic activities, and inclusive day services for people with learning disabilities, autism spectrum disorder, ADHD, and physical disabilities, elderly care via day centres and outreach, community development through drop-in centres, advocacy, and preventative early intervention, as well as refugee support, addiction recovery, and domestic abuse services. Beneficiaries span children and young people aged 5-25 facing barriers, families in crisis, carers of disabled individuals, isolated elderly residents, ethnic minorities, rural communities, homeless people, care leavers, veterans, and LGBTQ+ groups, with interventions favoring person-centred, trauma-informed, community-led, holistic, and evidence-based models like mentoring, outdoor activities, sports programs, helplines, and residential care.

With no fixed thematic exclusions, they avoid only trustee-conflicted decisions, prioritizing vulnerable local communities across diverse UK regions through responsive, needs-based funding. Distinctive as a generalist, family-stewarded trust, they favor grassroots charities, religious organizations, arts ensembles, and welfare providers demonstrating authentic community impact, innovation, and lived experience leadership over narrowly specialized or top-down approaches.