How we fund

• We invite a limited number of policy-focused organisations to become our strategic partners.
• We seek to build longer-term funding relationships and partnerships and provide opportunities for our strategic partners and others to share learning and practice.

This relational approach is described in more detail here:

Relational funding: the MHF approach

Strategic partners

Since 2013, we have concentrated on supporting a small number of organisations - our strategic partners - for whom policy work is core to addressing poverty and inequity. We award unrestricted funding for up to three years at a time, on the understanding that partners are actively encouraged to re-apply. We currently have five strategic partners, Citizens’ Advice Newcastle, IPPR North, North East Child Poverty Commission, Tyne and Wear Citizens and Voluntary Organisations Network North East (VONNE). We chose them because they have overarching interests in line with our own agenda of addressing issues of inequity, because they are skilled in policy thinking and development and because we believe that their work contributes that of many other policy workers and campaigners in the North East. We have a sustained relationship with them but we neither set their workplans for them nor make detailed demands of them.

Other grant-making

The Trustees are active in the voluntary sector themselves and always reserve the possibility of investing in interesting or potentially effective ideas that they or their Trust Manager come across and so may make occasional one-off grants.

Since 2013 two of our original strategic partners have wither closed or change direction and Trustees have twice (in 2022 and 2024) issued a time-limited invitation, to organisations active in the policy field, to apply for a smaller ‘getting to know you’ award.

Please note however, that we do not accept unsolicited applications at other times and do not have an open grants programme.