Helping boost wellbeing in our region through the Severn Trent Community Fund Launched in January 2020, our Community Fund donates 1% of our profits each year to charitable causes that aim to boost community wellbeing across the Severn Trent region. Non-profit organisations can apply for grants between £2,000 and £200,000 to support community projects in three themes: People: projects that help people lead a healthier life and gain new skills Places: projects that help create better places to live in and use Environment: projects that will help look after our natural environment and give people greater access to it, or help look after water. The beneficiaries of our fund are our customers, so it’s important to us that they are involved in the decision-making process. Therefore an independent panel oversees the fund, made up of customers from across our region with different interests and backgrounds, who review the strongest applications and make the final decision on where our money goes. They help ensure we get a good geographical spread of projects, targeting areas of need where we can have the greatest impact. It’s also important that projects are self-sustaining past the point of funding, for example with volunteers or staff trained to continue running them, and in some cases with the potential to generate an income. The fund’s impact over the last year In its first year, our Community Fund awarded over £1.5 million to 93 community projects, benefiting over 580,000 people, improving more than 680,000 square metres of our region’s environment, and creating or enhancing over 90 community spaces. Of this, nearly £250,000 has been awarded to our 10% most deprived communities. We were delighted to make our first awards on time, in April 2020, in spite of the challenges of the Covid-19 outbreak, and to visit several funded projects in between lockdowns. Perhaps most importantly, we launched our £1 million Emergency Coronavirus Fund, with £500,000 redirected from our Community Fund (see right). The challenge ahead The main challenge ahead is reaching the communities we haven’t been able to yet. So, we’re using tools such as the deprivation index and community wellbeing measures to identify the communities most in need of our support. Throughout 2021, our Community Fund team will be encouraging and supporting applications from these areas, where people often have no experience in applying for funding and have previously had limited access to support. Emergency Coronavirus Fund With the pandemic having a particular impact on the most vulnerable in our communities, we donated an additional £1 million to help our communities deal with the impact of Covid-19. We donated the first £500,000 to charities experiencing unprecedented demand for their services, including food banks, mental-health charities, and those supporting the elderly. We worked with community foundations and local authorities to identify the groups most in need of our support – with their knowledge, we could get the money exactly where it needed to be, as quickly as possible. The second half was donated later in the year to charities that had suffered financially through the pandemic, helping them get back on their feet and continue providing their services. In total, we’ve supported 339 local groups. It has been heart-warming to have received so many comments about its positive impact, particularly on how easy we made it for projects to access the funding. Support for local charities and community groups Support for local charities and community groups Support for local charities and community groups Support for local charities and community groups Support for local charities and community groups Support for local charities and community groups Severn Trent Community Fund Annual Review All donations map Emergency Coronavirus Fund Supporting the region Community Fund Support for domestic abuse victims Coventry Haven provides advice and support for women and children dealing with domestic abuse. A donation of £2,000 from the Emergency Fund helped continue this vital work – as a spokesperson from the charity said, “We are trying so hard to adapt our services to help women who need it, and this will really help – you have made my day!” We’ve made similar donations to the Domestic Abuse Safety Unit in Wrexham and to The Haven Wolverhampton. Members of the latter have shown their gratitude by giving some of our HR team specialist training in dealing with staff problems relating to domestic abuse. More than £300,000 from the Emergency Fund went to food banks and other food delivery services across the region. Many have told us how important the donations were, including Shrewsbury Food Hub: “All of this work cannot happen without the financial support from you and all our donors and grant givers, or as we call you ‘The Friends of the Food Hub’, so thank you!” In Coventry, we’ve donated £42,000 to the city’s Food Hubs. Visiting one of them, our CEO Liv Garfield observed, “It was lovely to see the hard work and dedication of the team and volunteers. I am thrilled that we’ve been able to support this great initiative in the city. They’re feeding around 2,000 people in need each week and offering a delivery service throughout – amazing!” Stocking the region’s food banks Help for the elderly We donated more than £60,000 of the Emergency Fund to organisations providing help for vulnerable elderly people. At Age UK Leicestershire our donation helped the charity support more than 6,500 people with shopping and collecting prescriptions, befriending phone calls and emergency care packages. It’s rewarding to know these funds are helping to meet an urgent need, with feedback such as this from Nottinghamshire: “Can I just say this is so welcome. In these difficult times, this is amazing – we’ve had a 400% increase in calls and with this we can increase our support. From the bottom of my heart, you have put a smile on my face and a tear in my eye.” Historic Coventry Trust A new heritage project, supported by £198,460 from the Community Fund, will rejuvenate a derelict railway line in Coventry, transforming it from a magnet for fly-tipping and anti-social behaviour into a new walking and cycling path. This will give the local community access to 70 acres of green space, supervised by a funded ranger who will engage volunteers in landscape management and maintenance, and provide education opportunities on wildlife and heritage. The National Space Centre Our first flagship project received a grant from the Community Fund for a new exhibition space in Leicester. The National Space Centre is expected to welcome around 250,000 visitors a year, educating them on how to sustain the health of our planet. It will also provide employment for more than 30 local people. The centre will focus on how satellite technology can benefit the environment, helping us monitor issues ranging from flooding to biodiversity. An interactive exhibition will use live data from NASA and other space agencies, and programmes will be designed for local schools. Built in one of our old storm tanks, the centre fits well with our ‘people, places and environment’ themes. Explore our data Community Fund donations Emergency Fund donations Emergency Fund donations Explore our data Community Fund donations Community Fund donations Emergency Fund donations Explore our data Community Fund donations Emergency Fund donations Emergency Fund donations Explore our data Community Fund donations Community Fund donations Emergency Fund donations