Please see below for a list of our most frequently asked questions. If you don’t find your query answered below, please contact us by email, or call our Bristol office on 0117 916 6740 and we’ll do all we can to help.
- What is the New Trust Update archive?
The archive is a record of Factary’s monthly publication the New Trust Update, which reports on newly registered grant-making trusts. The searchable database includes additional, updated classification information.
Those trusts that have been removed from the Charity Commission register have been excluded from the archive database. We also periodically review all trusts on the database, and remove those that we find not to be grant-makers.
- Is all the information on Factary’s New Trust Update up-to-date?
All the trusts on the New Trust Update archive have been reviewed to update their classification information relating to philanthropic areas of interest, geographical areas of benefit and other classifications such as open applications and corporate foundations. All newly registered trusts are reviewed and their classification information updated three years after their original registration. In addition, the following information is updated from the Charity Commission annually:
- Income & Expenditure
- Trustees
- Contact details
- Objects
- Charity Name
Note that we update the charity name in the Online Archive Database if it changes from when it was first registered, so occasionally the name may be different in the original New Trust Update PDF.
All trusts known to publish information on their grants and beneficiaries are reviewed every two years, with new grants added to the database.
- How are trusts classified in the archive?
The classification categories we use are originally based on the classifications as used by the Charity Commission but have been expanded to provide more detailed searching. Trusts are classified based on their charitable objects, their stated activities (either on the Charity Commission, in their accounts or their website), and also their grant-making history. They are a mix of ‘what’ and ‘who’ and can be used in combination to target your searches.
The categories used are as follows:
- Animals
- Armed Forces
- Arts & Culture
- Children & Youth
- Christianity
- Community
- Disability
- Education & Training
- Elderly
- Emergency Services
- Environment
- General Charitable Purposes
- Health
- Heritage
- Higher Education
- Hospices
- Housing
- International Development
- Islam
- Judaism
- Mental Health
- Other Religions
- Political Body
- Research
- Rights, Law & Conflict
- Sports & Recreation
- Welfare
- Women
We also use a detailed 3-tiered geographical area of benefit system. All featured trusts have a Tier 1 classification indicating if they fund nationally (across the UK), overseas or regionally. All regional funders will have a Tier 2 classification indicating which region of the UK they focus on. For overseas trusts, we have 3 tiers of classification based on continents, then continental regions.
This classification is based also on their charitable objects, their stated activities (either on the Charity Commission, in their accounts or their website), and also their grant-making history.
Those that provide no information on geographic area of benefit (the Charity Commission often classifies the area of benefit as ‘not defined’ when they are first established) are classified as National and Overseas initially, however these are reviewed three years after they have been established so the geographical area of benefit is updated at this time.
- How many criteria can I search on?
You can use as many search criteria as you want.
The default setting is that ALL the conditions are required. You can change that to ‘ANY’ of the conditions required at the top left of the search page if you wish.
We recommend keeping searches broad as there is the option to order the results in various ways in the results page.
- How do I search for philanthropic area of interest?
We have 28 categories of philanthropic area of interest in the ‘What’ section of the search page. Funders are assigned multiple classifications depending on their areas of funding. You can therefore use combinations of philanthropic activity types to target your searches. For example, ‘Health’ and ‘Research’ to find funders for medical research.
- How do I use the ‘How Much’ search function?
This search function relates to the financial size of the trust, both in terms of grant capacity and overall finances.
The slider allows you to set a minimum grant size AND/OR an average grant size. This is based on the grant data we have gathered for that trust from recent years. To calculate the average grant size, we have used the median method calculated by listing all the grants in order and finding the middle value. Please note that that the database doesn’t contain grant data for all the trusts. Therefore, searching for grant size will exclude those that do not have grants data available.
By clicking on ‘show advanced functions’ you can search by latest total expenditure to target your search towards larger funders. However, note that expenditure does fluctuate year on year.
If you leave this search function blank, it will return ALL funders that meet the other selected criteria regardless of size. There is then the option to order the search results on any financial/grant field in the results page.
- How do I search by geographical area of benefit?
In the ‘Where’ section of the search page there are two main options: ‘National’ and ‘Overseas’.
If you wish to search for specific regional funders, either in the UK or overseas, you can open the advanced search function and use the map tools. This search function is limited to only the 2nd tier classifications (UK regions and overseas continents). More detailed information on the funders’ specified areas of interest (UK counties and continental regions) are included in the detailed trust profile which you can access from the results page.
- What other search functions are there?
In the ‘Who’ section of the search page there are options to:
- Do keyword searches within the trusts’ objects
- Search for corporate foundations
- Search for trustees
- Search for ‘Foundations of Wealth’
- Search within the historical Research Notes for information on the background and aims of the funder and biographical information on the settlors and trustees
- Exclude trusts that have explicitly stated they do not accept unsolicited applications
- What are ‘Foundations of Wealth’?
Foundations of Wealth are those trusts and foundations that have been established by an individual whose wealth is estimated to be in excess of £10m. They are typically private family trusts and therefore act as the giving vehicle for a philanthropist and their family. You can limit your search to only return such ‘Foundations of Wealth’ using the toggle button in the ‘Who’ section of the search page.
You can learn more about the specific individual behind the trust by reading the Research Notes in the original issue of New Trust Update the trust was featured in.
- What are ‘Corporate Foundations’?
These are foundations established by companies as their vehicle for philanthropic giving. You can limit your search to only return corporate foundations using the toggle button in the Who section of the search page.
- Why would I want to be able to search by trustee?
So you can check to see if any of your board members, key donors or volunteers are trustees of grant-making trusts. The trustees for each grant-maker are updated from the Charity Commission annually.
- What is the Factary Research Notes search function?
This allows you to carry out keyword searches within the research notes compiled by Factary and included in the trust’s profile in the monthly report from which the trusts were featured.
These include information on the trust’s background, aims and objectives, as well as biographic notes on the settlors and trustees. This could be useful for identifying network connections between your board members and grant-maker trustees for example, or identifying funders with specific aims and interests.
The research notes for each trust can be read by opening the pdf report (clicking the pdf link icon in the trust’s details page) and finding their entry. Please note that the research notes are historical and relates to the information on the trust and trustees that was available at the original time of research. Trustees may no longer be involved with the trust and aims and objectives of the trust may have changed with time.
- What does the ‘Exclude funders that do not accept unsolicited applications’ option do?
You can use this option to limit the search to those funders that have not explicitly stated they will not accept unsolicited applications. This is based on information in their accounts, website or through interviews or questionnaire responses from the trusts’ correspondents.
- What does ‘Grant Data Available’ mean?
This option allows you to limit your search to only those trusts and foundations where we have been able to gather historic grant information for – who the recipients are and how much the grants were for. This information is displayed in the funders’ detailed profile accessible via the results page.
- What are ‘newly registered’ trusts?
These are trusts and foundations that are still classified as ‘newly registered’ by the Charity Commission as they are yet to submit their first set of accounts. This usually happens within two to three years of them being registered. No financial information is available for these trusts.
- Can I filter or re-sort the results?
Yes, you can click on any of the column headings to order the results (either alphabetically or by value). You can also click on the ‘Show Financial Information’ button to show additional grant and financial figures for each trust and then filter the results on those columns too.
- Can I see more information on the trusts?
Yes, click on the yellow Info icon on the left of the page. This detailed profile contains all the classification information and details of grants awarded (if available).
You can also click on the pdf link to open up the original issue in which the trust was featured in the New Trust Update and read the biographical information on the trustees and other details from the research carried out at the time of publication or subsequent three-year review.
- Can I export my trust search results?
Yes.
There is an ‘Export to CSV’ button at the top of the search results page that allows you to export your results. You can filter and sort the results in the downloaded file in greater detail. This will also allow you to annotate and work on the search results offline, in your own time, without having to re-run the same search.
The export function is limited to 300 results or fewer. If your initial search returns more results than this, we suggest making your results more targeted by applying additional criteria, such as latest total income, to your current search.
- What is the grants search?
Where available, we gather information on grants awarded by the trusts as published in their annual accounts or other sources such as their website. This allows you to see what size grants trusts award, and the recipient search function allows you to see who has supported similar organisations and causes to yours.
We only around have grant data for around 1 in 3 of the trusts on the database. Not all trusts disclose this information in their accounts, and many trusts’ income levels are under the threshold at which they are required to publish their accounts on the Charity Commission website.
All trusts are reviewed periodically, with new grant data added regularly.
- How can I search the grants module?
You can search by donor, recipient and grant amount. Note that not all grant records have an amount, so searching by amount will exclude those gifts on the database for which there is no specific amount recorded.
You can also do keyword searches in the Donation Notes field. This is information provided by the trust when they state what the grant was specifically given for.
- Why can’t I search by recipient activity type?
At present we do not hold classification information relating to the recipients’ area of philanthropic activity. This is something we hope to be able to introduce at a later stage.
- I want to know more about the donor, is this possible?
Yes, on the results page you can click on the ‘i’ icon to the far left and that will open up that trust’s detailed profile.
- Can I export my search results?
Yes.
This can easily be done by clicking on the Export to CSV button. This will download a file to your device. This file can be opened in your spreadsheet software where you can order and filter your search results.
The export is limited to 4,000 results or fewer, so if your initial search returns more results than this, you can apply additional search criteria to ensure your results are more targeted.