Grantee portal 
One of the Community Foundation’s oldest funds, the Ward Hadaway Fund at the Community Foundation Tyne & Wear and Northumberland, has been making grants for over 22 years.
Established in 2001, the Ward Hadaway Fund has shown a commitment to grassroots charities and voluntary organisations across the region with grants supporting a diverse range of projects, particularly those connected to health, including mental health, and young people.
Ross Wilson, Senior Philanthropy Advisor at the Community Foundation said:
“Through the years, the Ward Hadaway Fund has provided vital unrestricted grants to organisations across the North East, North West and Yorkshire, giving them the flexibility to use it for their most pressing needs.”
Curious Monkey, an award-winning theatre company based in Newcastle, share the stories of marginalised and underrepresented communities, raising awareness of the issues they face. Their projects promote inclusion and celebrate diversity, with an emphasis on engaging with and providing a voice to young people in care, who are care leavers and refugee and asylum seekers. They have received two grants from the Ward Hadaway Fund.
Jen Dewar, Executive Director and Joint CEO, Curious Monkey said of these grants:
“We are really grateful for the generous support we received from the Ward Hadaway Fund, which supported us to continue co-created projects with young people who have experience of the care system and people seeking sanctuary, providing regular creative activity helping to improve people’s wellbeing, and events to celebrate their achievements.”
Another beneficiary is Hospitality & Hope, a Christian faith-based organisation that delivers services in South Tyneside to people of all faiths experiencing food poverty and homelessness.
Carol Gorman, Operations Manager, Hospitality & Hope explained how current circumstances make grant funding more important:
“Demand at our South Tyneside Food Bank has continued at the increased levels generated by the pandemic. Grant funding like this has allowed us to continue to support more families and children during these challenging times”.
Jamie Martin, who leads on Ward Hadaway’s Responsible Business Strategy, added, “As a successful business which itself was born and bred in the North East, Ward Hadaway takes its responsibilities very seriously to the communities within which we live and work.
“The Community Foundation has always been a really effective way for us to invest in charitable organisations based within our communities. The organisation sits at the heart of an incredibly diverse and populous network of charities, many of them very small. The fund provides these fantastic organisations, like Curious Monkey and Hospitality & Hope, with funding, support and mentoring, to help them fulfil their objectives and get investment into the real heart of a community where it has the most impact.”