How we work
The Trust supports a wide range of local communities and issues, and places an emphasis on being approachable, supportive and flexible so that the grant application process is as positive as possible for grant seekers. With a generous spirit, the trustees encourage the Trust Manager, Carla Marshall, to carry out a personalised approach to working with grant seekers and grant holders, providing added value through her visits, online meetings and support.
We operate a two-stage application process through our online SmartyGrants portal – Expression of Interest (EOI) first and then full application form. We aim to save grant seekers time and energy by only asking them to complete a full application form if our Trust Manager believes they stand a strong chance of getting a grant – more than 50% of all grant seekers that send in an enquiry to the Trust receive a grant.
If our Trust Manager feels your charity is a good match with the Trust after reading your EOI, she will get in touch to arrange an in person or Teams meeting to find out more and if helpful, share intelligence on funding, governance and communications.
Our Trust Manager currently recommends around 30 charities to our trustees to consider for a grant at each meeting and the budget for each meeting is around £115,000. The trustees aim to approve as many of the recommendations as possible.
Our full application form is purposely not available to complete on our website so that our Trust Manager can get to know your organisation first and then provide guidance on how to write a strong application for the Sir George Martin Trust. However, you can review PDFs of our EOI, full application form and report form for grant holders so you can see the questions and how long the forms are. We have also included some Top Tips to help you write your full application form.
The Sir George Martin Trust is a participant of the Common Application Form initiative (CAF) which aims to make the application process for grant seekers easier and faster by many local funders asking similar questions in the same format on their application form. And in January 2026, the Trust adopted Yorkshire Funders’ new Common Report Form (CRF). Over time, Yorkshire Funders hope more funders will adopt the CRF so that they can fill in the same report form for multiple funders, saving grant holders time and energy. The other CAF and CRF participants can be reviewed at https://yorkshirefunders.org.uk/commonforms/
The Sir George Martin Trust has signed up to IVAR’s eight commitments to adopt more Open & Trusting practices that make life easier for grant seekers and those we fund.
