DSC opens pre-orders for The Guide to New Trusts 2026/27
Howard Lake | 1 October 2026 | News
The Directory of Social Change (DSC) has opened pre-orders for The Guide to New Trusts 2026/27, a digital-only guide identifying more than 100 newly registered grant-making charities.
The 15th edition of the guide will be published on Monday 12 October 2026 as a downloadable PDF, priced at £85.
Written by DSC senior researcher Jessica Threlfall, the guide profiles trusts and foundations registered in 2025/26, selected for their broad geographical reach and diverse funding interests. Each entry sets out a funder’s aims and objectives, the causes and project types it does and does not support, contact details, application guidelines and, where available, its social media accounts.
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The edition also includes progress reports on a selection of high-performing funders identified in earlier editions, tracking how they have developed since they were first profiled.
Anyone pre-ordering the guide will also receive a research document analysing how new trusts have evolved over the past 15 years, ahead of the main publication reaching subscribers on 12 October.
40 pages of new content
DSC has produced this research annually for well over a decade, and the guide has become a fixture for fundraisers focused on staying up to date with trusts and foundations. Newly established funders are some of the hardest to find through conventional research routes: they rarely have long track records, established websites or a presence on the major funding databases, and many are set up by families or individuals who prefer to keep a low profile until they have settled on their giving priorities. That makes early identification valuable.
A trust that has not yet built a reputation, or a queue of applicants, can be more approachable for a charity making first contact than one that is already well known and oversubscribed.
DSC says all of the information in this edition is new compared with the last, rather than a refresh of existing entries, and it runs to around 40 pages.
The guide sits alongside DSC’s wider Funds Online platform, which brings together around 8,000 funders and a combined total of £8 billion in funding, for charities wanting a broader, searchable view of the trusts and foundations landscape alongside the detail in this guide.
Andrew Downie, funding manager at Harbour Ayrshire, is quoted in DSC’s announcement:
“Having been involved in fundraising all of my working life – the last nine years of which have been fundraising from trusts and foundations – I always find The Guide to New Trusts to be packed full of the latest funding opportunities. Year on year, it has been a great source of support for our charity, helping us to secure vital funds.”
The guide is available to pre-order now on the DSC website, with delivery of the digital edition confirmed for 12 October 2026.
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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.