OCT Funding Impact: 2024-25

At the beginning of each year we review our giving data and reflect on the findings. Headlines from our annual impact report for 2024/25 are shared on our website here. These reflect the broader, challenging funding landscape and the changes we’ve experienced within the trust over recent years.

Headline findings:

1. This year 22 new grants were approved, 6 of these with organisations that we haven’t previously worked with. This is a small decrease from previous years, but the total spend on new grants is broadly comparable to 2022/23. 
2. At £2.3m, total giving has reduced this year, and is more in line with spending in 2020/21 and 2021/22.
3. Of the four focus areas in our Purpose Framework, Health was the largest grant area for a second year, making up 40% of total spend but with a relatively small number (7) of larger grants. This is a 10% increase on the previous year. 
4. In contrast, our proportion of spending on our focus area of Environment has reduced (falling to 8% from 18% last year). We can partly attribute this to some larger grants in this focus area coming to an end. 
5. As was the case last year, much of our funding in 2024/25 was Unrestricted or Core (57% of spend), with 55% of funding spent on salaries. 
6. Three quarters (75%) of our active grants funded work in some part of Greater Manchester this year. Of these, the majority (65%) were in the borough of Manchester, with Salford (26%), Rochdale (23%) and Oldham (21%) also attracting a large proportion.

The story behind the figures

2024 saw a drop in non-governmental grants in the UK, within a difficult economic and geopolitical time. We have heard from our grantholders that funding in particular from large organisations is drying up. In response, we are continuing to prioritise Unrestricted and Core funding where this is most useful, enabling charities to focus on their missions. We aim to assess impact for these grants through working alongside grantees to understand progress and challenges across the organisation more broadly. 

In previous years we’ve looked to focus our giving on addressing the threat of climate change and protecting our nature, through our green grants programme for existing grantholders and looking for new funding areas. While the reduction in spending within our Environment focus area partly reflects some of the larger grants coming to an end, the impact data indicates that equally our desk research and sector network connections have not yet directly led to an uptick in the trust’s environmental spend. This is something we are working proactively to address in the coming year.

Conclusion

Looking beyond the headline figures, we can see that despite the reduced expenditure overall this year, the number of new relationships started was the same as the previous year. Moving forward, we will continue to listen to our grantholders to ensure our funding remains as supportive and flexible during these unpredictable times. Even within the scarce funding landscape, we remain committed to building new relationships and exploring funding priorities that address the most pressing needs of our communities.