Engage Mutual Foundation announces first community grant winners
Howard Lake | 19 June 2014 | News
Engage Mutual Foundation has announced the two main recipients of its first community grants. A community gymnastics club in Lincolnshire and a community swimming pool in Surrey have each received £25,000. Eight other groups have won £5,000 each for their community projects.
The Foundation was established in January 2014 by mutual insurance company Engage Mutual, which provides life insurance, savings and health products to around half a million people in the UK. It has set aside £1 million to fund causes supported by its customers. It also makes smaller grants of £500 available to individuals needing financial support.
Two £25,000 winners
The first winner of £25,000 is Witham Hill Gymnastics Club in Lincolnshire, which will use the funds to build gymnastics pits, making activities on vault, bars and tumble much more accessible.
Engage Mutual customer, Mark Thornton, applied for the funding. When the project went forward to public online voting, he and his committee members successfully secured the highest number of votes, partly inspired by a display exercise by the gymnasts in Lincoln City Centre.
Thornton said:
“When I applied for the community award, the thought never even occurred to me that we could win. We really can’t thank Engage enough! They have kept all project owners fully informed throughout the process, really helping to keep the momentum going”.
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The Farnborough Fins swimming club, based at King’s International College in Surrey has also won a £25,000 award from Engage Mutual and will use the money to fund a restructure renovation project on the much loved community hub that will help deliver improved facilities for all, and provide pool access for swimmers with severe disabilities.
Anna Drabble, Head of Community at Engage Mutual said:
“When we set up the Engage Foundation earlier on in the year we did so with one overriding objective: to enable customers to benefit from the financial success of their business. We think it’s great to be able to help a community project or a good cause that people feel passionate about. We’re very much looking forward to seeing the improvements funded by the £25,000 grant and wish all the budding gymnasts all the very best with their new equipment.”
In this first grants round 256 projects were nominated, and 55,999 online votes were received.
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.