Enriching Lives through the Power of Music
About Us
The Postlethwaite Music Foundation is a grant making trust established in 2015 by Mrs Ruth Holmes in memory of her mother's family and is funded through an endowment from the estate of Alan Postlethwaite.
The Postlethwaite family were accomplished musicians, sharing a great love of music, and so the Foundation's aim is to encourage a larger number of people to benefit from this area of the arts.
Our Objectives
The aim of our Foundation is to enrich lives through the power of music, by promoting and advancing music, focusing on the following objectives:
- Music education for children and adults
- Music in the community including the promotion of wellbeing
- Music therapy delivered by music professionals
Grant applicants should choose the objective which best matches their proposed work. It is not necessary to meet more than one of the objectives.
Who We Support
Grants will only be awarded to small music-focused charities working in England and registered with The Charity Commission for England and Wales.
We would generally regard a small charity as one with an annual income of less than £150,000.
Please note that we are not able to consider applications from individuals.
Information About Our Grants
Grants are typically in the region of £1,000 to £1,500.
Whilst grants of 100% are considered, we look favourably on requests which are partly funded by other contributors.
We prefer to provide unrestricted funding, where appropriate, and can consider multi-year funding to charities who have previously received a grant.
Grants will not be awarded for work that has already taken place.
Our Application Process
Your application will normally be considered at our next trustees’ meeting and you will be informed of the outcome within 2/3 days. If you receive a grant, then the funds will be available within 2/3 weeks.
Our Feedback Requirements
If you are successful, we hope that you will be able to provide feedback after your event or work has been completed (usually within ten months of receiving the grant). A Grant Feedback Form (2 A4 pages) will be provided, but we are happy to receive reports prepared for other funders. Photos and quotes from beneficiaries are also very welcome.
This feedback will be read by our trustees and enables them to judge the impact of our grants. We will use the feedback in both our Annual Report and our regular newsletters to promote our charity beneficiaries and the work of our Foundation.
Who We Have Supported
Since the Foundation was founded most of the charities reaching the application stage have been successful. So far we have given 91 grants totalling £118,162 to 48 different charities. These have supported the following:
A Range of Concerts
Student Bursaries
Community Singing Workshops
New Music Groups
Music Therapy Sessions
Commissioned Works
Purchase of Musical Equipment
Adaptation of Instruments for Those with Disabilities
Music Research
In 2024 we have given our largest number of grants ever which totalled £23,900. We've been pleased to support an extensive range of musical activities including:
Free Brass Band Concerts in Hampshire
The Lincoln Jazz Festival
Carol Concert by Choirs for Those with Mental Health Issues in Kent
National Youth Folk Ensemble Student Bursaries
Community and Pop-up Opera in Leeds
Choral Workshops in Lincolnshire, North and West Yorkshire
Electronic Youth Music Project in Cheshire
Open and Trusting
We have continued our commitment to being a more approachable and transparent funder through involvement in the IVAR Open and Trusting Network. One of our trustees, Mike Holmes, who recently took part in an IVAR funder/charity peer review on behalf of the Foundation said: "It was very useful to have feedback on the Foundation from charity reviewers as they clearly understand the issues around grant seeking.
In their report the IVAR reviewers commented “Small family trusts are often badged as being intransigent and difficult to work with, however the Postlethwaite Music Foundation is the complete opposite. It actively keeps checking in with the IVAR commitments and using them as a tool to operate as effectively as they can, given that all the trustees have limited time and resource to run the foundation. What a refreshing approach.”
What You Can Do?
If you are thinking of making an application, then please contact our Administrator for an initial discussion about your organisation and its work. In addition to considering unsolicited applications our trustees actively seek appropriate charities which the Foundation can fund.
As trustees we appreciate that there is an increasing need for funding to enable music charities to give people of all ages the opportunity of participating in making music or attending live community music events. Given that we have limited resources we are now looking at how we can increase our income to help meet this demand. If you would like to support the Foundation's work then please consider making a donation or remembering us in your will.
If you would like to keep up-to-date with our activities then please sign up for our newsletters below.
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The Postlethwaite Music Foundation is committed to transparency and work with 360Giving to publish information about our grants. Using the 360Giving Data Standard, our awarded grants since 2016 are available as an Excel spreadsheet here. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/lic.... This means the data is freely accessible to anyone to be used and shared as they wish. The data must be attributed to The Postlethwaite Music Foundation.
We believe that with better information, funders can be more effective and strategic decision makers. 360Giving supports funders to publish open data about their grants, and empowers people to use this data to improve charitable giving through a range of free online tools. For more information, visit https://www.threesixtygiving.o...
