October Club seeks transformational charity project for £500k funding
Howard Lake | 19 January 2017 | News
The October Club is looking for the next small charity to receive its annual £500,000 funding. The Club, founded in 1987 by a group of City workers, will only fund charities working on a transformational project.
Originally set up in response to the plight of leukaemia sufferers, The October Club has held annual dinners ever since, raising over £10 million for charities. This has helped fund ground-breaking research, raising awareness and enabling challenging expansion plans.
This year, the 30th anniversary for The October Club, funds will be raised at a gala dinner at The Savoy attended by over four hundred senior City professionals, and a race day at Ascot in July.
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Does your charity qualify?
The October Club has three clear rules for eligibility of charities:
1. The Club funds small and growing charities with voluntary income of between £500,000 and £2 million per annum.
2. The funding is for a transformational project based across several UK regions.
3. The funds must be used within three years.
The Club, run by its 25 committee members, is very clear that its goal is to help innovative fledgling charities achieve that next level. They apply extensive due diligence to make sure that the Club can have a significant impact on the chosen charity.
Previous charity partners
- Honeypot Children’s Charity in 2015
- Auditory Verbal UK in 2014
- The Encephalitis Society in 2013
- St Giles Trust in 2012
WATCH: The October Club – an introduction
Tom Isaacs, co-founder of The Cure Parkinson’s Trust, the Club’s 2016 partners, said:
“The October Club represents a unique and extraordinary opportunity for smaller charities with big ideas to realise their visions and make a significant impact on their chosen cause.
Working with the October Club has been truly transformational for The Cure Parkinson’s Trust and has enabled us to commence a project which has the capacity to embrace the entire global Parkinson’s community to work together as a team. Finally, one of the most unusual products of our dealings with the October Club is the fun we’ve had and the friends we’ve made along the way.”
Chairman of The October Club, Mark Pumfrey, said:
“We are proud of the City’s ongoing commitment to supporting important causes such as the one promoted by The Cure Parkinson’s Trust. We are especially grateful of the enthusiasm and the commitment of the industry, both longstanding and new supporters, whose work and generosity allows us to continue this tradition of supporting extraordinary people and causes.”
Application for the 2017 partnership is now open and you can download the form from The October Club.
More on The October Club
- 2019 charity partner sought by The October Club (3 December 2018)
- October Club seeks small transformational charity to support for one year (1 February 2016)
- MS Trust chosen as October Club’s official charity partner for 2018 (7 July 2017)
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.