Welcome to your Community Foundation

The Community Foundation for Shropshire is an operating name of the Community Foundation for Staffordshire and Shropshire.  We are the registered, recognised and accredited Community Foundation for Staffordshire and Shropshire.  Since 2001 we have awarded more than £22m to local charities and community groups across Staffordshire and Shropshire.   We are accredited to UKCF standards, who are our membership body and represent us on a national level.  We also hold accreditation to ISO standards.

Every county in the UK has access to a community foundation.  Some community foundations cover two or more counties, such as Heart of England (Birmingham, the Black Country, Coventry and Warwickshire); Two Ridings (North and East Ridings of Yorkshire); Sussex Community Foundation (East and West Sussex); Liverpool & Merseyside; Tyne and Wear & Northumberland; and us here in Staffordshire & Shropshire.  There are national community foundations in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Effective giving to your local community

Every year many people decide to give something back to their local community.  This could be through personal giving as an individual or as a family, or by giving as a business.  Often there is an assumption that giving is easy; that your gift will be effective and will change people’s lives for the better as you had intended. However, there are many pitfalls, and if not done properly giving can be very time consuming, inefficient and ultimately ineffective, not meeting your giving objectives.

We are here to help.  The Community Foundation is a specialist in giving to the local community, and we make the process quick, easy and cost effective.  We ensure that your gift has the impact that you want it to; transforming lives and creating opportunities for people that would otherwise never experience them.

Our History

There has been a community foundation in Shropshire since 2008, when the Telford Community Trust converted to become the Community Foundation for Shropshire, Telford & Wrekin.  Sadly, they were forced to close in 2012 due to external factors.  This left a danger that the voluntary sector in Shropshire would not receive the financial support that it needed, and so the work was taken on by neighbouring Staffordshire, and the Community Foundation for Staffordshire & Shropshire was born.  By sharing resources it means we can keep costs low but maximise our available resources, and ensure as much support as possible goes into our communities.

As part of our development we established a sub-committee of people based in Shropshire that could help to steer our work.  As they didn’t have the grants management experience, but were very committed to wanting to see support for the VCSE sector in Shropshire grow, we agreed that they would focus on fundraising aspects.  The sub-committee eventually decided that they wanted to do things differently and broke away to become a separate organisation.