Our approach to grant-making

Walton Charity is a place-based funder committed to tackling poverty and inequality in Elmbridge, Surrey.

We award community grants to organisations addressing poverty in our local area, and give funds to local charities and schools who are supporting families and individuals living on a low income.

Through our community grants programme, we fund project and core costs and are keen to support organisations with:

• evaluation - both process and impact evaluations - to find out what works best

• capacity-building - helping organisations to become more effective and sustainable

• participation - supporting organisations to work in partnership with the people they serve

• marketing - to improve awareness of and access to support and services.

Beyond grant-making, we offer affordable office space to local charities and support networking, collaboration and knowledge-sharing among our partners.

Flexible funding

We are committed to open and flexible grant-making, ensuring our application process is straightforward and our reporting requirements are simple and meaningful.

We are open to funding new or innovative approaches and piloting new ideas, and we make a significant proportion of our funding available for unrestricted and multi-year grants. We are happy to talk through funding ideas and proposals with organisations before they apply to make sure projects and applications broadly meet our funding criteria and priorities.

Sharing information about our grants

We believe that with better information, grant makers can be more effective and strategic decision makers. We work with 360Giving to openly publish information about our grants. Details of all the grants we have awarded since 2021 are available to view here.

Promoting the real Living Wage

Walton Charity is committing to tackling low pay in our local area. We are a Living Wage employer and encourage the organisations we support to pay the real Living Wage.