What is charitable sponsorship?

We are a registered charity, and share our charitable status with movements by offering charitable sponsorship, so that unincorporated movements can use the Trust’s charitable status to be eligible for funding opportunities or to claim gift aid.

This is simlar to fiscal sponsorship, although we don't offer ongoing financial or grant management services - we refer movements to our trusted partners if they need this ongoing support.

We don’t offer a fundraising service, but for movements who are doing their own funding applications, or who have an individual donor who is a UK taxpayer, we can work with you to provide the charitable status requirement.

For donors who want to grant to movements but can’t because the movement is not a charity, you can also use us as a sponsor intermediary.

Are you a fiscal host or sponsor?

Join our Community of (Best) Practice here!

Process

We have a simple application process to understand from the movement

What your objectives are
How you are organised
What kind of impact you seek

This allows us to understand if your work is charitable by definition. We can’t support any activities are:

Illegal, including illegal direct action and protest
Political lobbying

Once we have approved your application, you can apply to us to sponsor a grant or donation. We need a short amount of additional information

The donor and grant size
What the funding will be used for
What kind of impact you seek for the funding

We recommend you apply to us for sponsorship when you are writing a grant application, but sometimes we recognize you need us once you have a grant offer, particularly in the case of donations from individuals. We will work will you quickly to help if needed.

Sometime we will need to work with you and your donor to put in place an agreement, otherwise TMT uses a simple agreement to ensure the funds will be used for charitable purposes. Then we can pass the funds to you, or to your fiscal host or incubator if you use one to manage your finances.

We can signpost to you a fiscal, or financial host or service provider if that is what you need.

For individual donors, we can sponsor donations from individual givers, and this means we can claim the gift aid for you.