The Silver Lady Fund has four main areas of work:

  • Providing specific gifts in kind to those most in need.
  • Supporting project-based and ongoing initiatives.
  • Providing seed or development funding for charities that need an extra hand while they’re starting out or undergoing a period of development.
  • And linking individual donors or businesses with high quality projects they can personally invest in and have a long term connection with.

Gifts in kind

The Silver Lady Fund considers grants to individuals and families to be an important part of the work of the charity and one of the most direct and effective ways of making a real difference in people’s lives. The charity is constantly receiving requests for support in this area, and is proud to have helped thousands of individuals and families.

Click here to read a case study about a family-in-need the Silver Lady Fund have previously supported.

Project-based and ongoing initiatives

We’re keen to learn alongside our partners about what makes a successful project, whether that’s in the UK or overseas, and pride ourselves on being reflexive and supportive donors. Sustainability and impact are two areas we believe any poverty alleviation project should address, whether focussing on education, basic health or any other building block out of poverty. In particular, we prefer to support projects that we can feel genuinely involved in, and that are harder to attract funding from other donors – we therefore rarely consider co-funding.

UK

The Silver Lady Fund currently supports numerous ongoing charitable initiatives operating in vulnerable communities across the UK. From providing homeless shelters and outreach workers with essential facilities and equipment, to funding a counsellor in a women’s prison enabling the women’s safe and stable re-introduction to society, to continuing the charity’s tradition of providing a Christmas meal each year to the homeless, the Silver Lady Fund supports a broad range of initiatives targeting those most in need. It has also provided funds for a mobile canteen to provide food and drink to the homeless and thus reverting to our roots of The All Night Travelling Cafe.

Click here to read a case study about an ongoing initiative for the homeless and rough sleeping supported by the Silver Lady Fund, where one charitable deed has led to another.

International

Since the start of its international work in 2011, the Silver Lady Fund has supported seven projects working with some of the poorest communities in the world. From building and repairing schools and wells in rural communities where the impacts of climate change are devastating local livelihoods, to initiating an emergency response after a house fire burned down an entire settlement in an urban slum. The Silver Lady Fund supplied the building and cooking materials for the whole community to rebuild their accommodation and lives. It is actively involved in working towards international sustainable development and poverty alleviation goals.

Click here to read a case study about an innovative water and sanitation project supported by the Silver Lady Fund in Madagascar.

Seed funding

As Nelson Mandela said – ‘It always seems impossible until it’s done’. At the Silver Lady Fund, we like to enable positive change that wouldn’t otherwise have been possible, and focus our support on projects that can demonstrate a strong likelihood of operating independently beyond our initial hand up. From a travelling van providing free food and drink to rough sleepers that builds on the legacy of the Silver Lady Fund, to new winter night shelters in impoverished parishes, the Silver Lady Fund is proud to have provided a helping hand to inspiring new charities across the UK.

Click here to read a case study about a group of people who were concerned about the welfare of homeless people in their area and wanted to do their bit to make a difference.

Click here to compare images of the Silver Lady Fund’s original travelling van from 1905 and the independent van financed by the Silver Lady Fund in 2013

Personalised giving

We like to get to know the people we work with and for, and provide a vital service for individuals and companies who want to know where their money’s going. Through the close links we’ve established with a handful of excellent programmes, we can help you target your donation to where it will make the most difference, with a project you can become personally involved with.

Click here to read Linda’s story*, who wanted to use part of her inheritance to make a meaningful difference to the lives of vulnerable women before and after childbirth in one of the poorest countries on the planet.

*false name used to protect the donor’s anonymity