Since the early 1990s Yorkshire has had a thriving networking community for charitable trusts and foundations thanks to a group of passionate grant makers including the Sir George Martin Trust’s Peter Marshall OBE and Geoff Hill of the Metcalfe Smith Trust. They established the Yorkshire Grant Makers Forum (YGMF) in 1993 and with the help of other local trust and foundation trustees and employees managed to hold the bi-annual Forums every year come what may.
During the 2000s, the National Lottery Community Fund started the Yorkshire & Humber Funders Forum which met quarterly with a roundtable format and in the early years was mainly attended by public and statutory funders.
For many years the two Forums have run successfully side-by-side, providing local funding organisations with regular networking and learning opportunities on their doorstep. Since joining the Trust in 2013, our Trust Manager, Carla Marshall has been responsible for co-ordinating the YGMFs and having also attended all the Yorkshire & Humber Funders Forums during this time, she then became the co-ordinator for this Forum at the end of 2017.
With increasing crossover between the attendees of the Forum, the topics covered and the administration, earlier this year it became clear that it would be a good idea to integrate the two Forums to create one. After consultation with charitable trusts and foundations across the region and a resounding response in favour or having one Forum, the Yorkshire Funders Forum is now the new name for the amalgamated Forums.
The next 2019 events will take place on the 18th September in Wakefield and 14th November in Leeds. A new www.yorkshirefunders.org.uk website featuring information on the events, sector news and funding information will go live in the autumn.