Our services

Directors of the Sportsman's Charity, a charitable trust administered by SCF

We offer you transparent, robust and objective grantmaking services.

  • Directing funds – To charities that you have supported for many years.
  • Promoting availability – To find new and suitable projects for your Trust to support.
  • Handling enquiries – We handle enquiries on your behalf, to ensure they meet your criteria and follow application procedures.
  • Receiving and assessing applications – Our services include collation of all applications, initial eligibility check and then full assessment. This is based on criteria agreed with you, such as: strength of need for the project, breadth of impact, financial health and track record.
  • Recommendations – You can choose to see all of the assessment reports, or instead see a shortlist matching your charitable objectives.
  • Informing applicants – After deciding on the projects you would like to support, the Foundation will inform all applicants of the outcome.
  • Reporting back to trustees – We will keep you informed via an annual report, an interim six-monthly report and via secure access to your fund’s activities on our website.
We work with existing charitable trusts in two ways:
  • Trustees can make an annual award to the Foundation, which would be ring-fenced and distributed in accordance with agreed criteria within a twelve-month period.
  • Trustees can make a gift of capital to the Foundation, which is held in a ring-fenced endowed fund, earning interest. The capital and interest can either be spent over a number of years (an expendable endowment) or it can be held in perpetuity, where only the annual interest is used (a permanent endowment).
Costs

We believe our fees are competitive compared with the cost of establishing and running a private charitable trust.

The Scottish Community Foundation is a charity and our fees are largely based on the complexity of distributing funding. For Annual Funds (where payments are made on a year-to-year basis), these range from 5% of the annual value (where the client selects charities to support) to 10% (with a detailed open award programme). For Endowed Funds, our charges are based on a percentage of the annual capital value, ranging from 0.7% to 1%.

We provide support at no cost to assist in formal reorganisation, liaising with OSCR the charity regulator. For older trusts with redundant purposes we can also find modern day alternatives for charitable support. We provide this at no cost during the fund set-up period, and we would only charge for commissioned research.

For more information, please call our private client manager Gill Thring on 0131 524 0300.