Funding for Westcountry Charities, Community Groups & Schools
What We Fund
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Number of Grants (since 1979)
Value of Grants in £ (since 1979)
Who We Are
The Norman Family Trust was set up in 1979 by Mr W K Norman after he sold and retired from his Norman’s Cash & Carry business, which had a number of thriving stores across the South West. Mr Norman was keen to repay the loyal support of his customers from the region and, along with other family members as fellow donors and trustees, set up a grant-making trust to provide funding to Westcountry charities and other non-profit organisations.
The Trust is based in Budleigh Salterton in East Devon, which is where Mr Norman lived and opened his first store.
Questions & Answers
Who do we fund?
We consider applications from Registered Charities, CIOs, CICs, non-profit sports clubs and other voluntary and community groups. We also consider applications from state schools but please check the Our Funding page for restrictions.
What do we fund?
We’re keen to support requests for funding towards specific projects or items, especially if you can provide budgets/quotes for them. If fundraising towards the project or items still has some way to go, trustees may prefer to offer a pledge rather than grant, which would then be payable when fundraising has been completed.
We can consider requests for running costs/core costs but are unable to support these on an ongoing basis. Therefore, if you apply for running costs/core costs and are successful, you would need to apply for something different in your next application.
What don't we fund?
We are unable to consider requests from individuals.
In order to reflect the wishes of our founder, we don’t fund any projects or organisations which use live animals for research or testing.
We also don’t fund the maintenance or upkeep of religious buildings and any faith-based projects or projects with any religious elements.
We’re not currently funding festivals, although this is subject to annual review. Our 2025/26 policy will be confirmed soon.
Where do we fund?
We can only support projects where the beneficiaries are in our preferred area of benefit: Devon, Cornwall (including the Isles of Scilly) and the southern and western parts of Somerset (TA postcodes only). When making decisions, trustees will prioritise applications from Exeter and East Devon to reflect the wishes of our founder.
We tend to prefer smaller, local organisations as our grants will make more of an impact to the work of such groups. However, if your organisation is regional or national, you may still apply providing you can show in your application that the beneficiaries of the project (or a significant majority) are within the area mentioned above.
How much do we give?
Most of the grants we award are between £1,000 and £5,000. We will consider larger requests but these are unlikely to be supported unless we have a longstanding relationship with the applicant and can be satisfied that the grant will have a significant impact.
Please be aware that our trustees may decide to support your application at a lower level than that requested and we strongly encourage you to approach other funders as well. We’re always oversubscribed and unable to support all requests in full, even if they otherwise meet our criteria.
If your application is towards a large capital project and you still have some way to go before completing your fundraising, trustees may decide to award a pledge rather than a grant, which will become payable when you are ready to proceed with the work and have the remaining funding in place.
You can see further information about the sort of grants we make on our Facts and Figures page.
How long will it take?
The Grants Committee meets every other month and considers all applications received up to the meeting deadline. This means that there should be a maximum of 2 months between application submission and receipt of a decision. We aim to let all applicants know the outcome within a day or two of the meeting. You can always find the meeting and deadline dates in the News section of this website. Generally speaking, Grants Committees are held in January, March, May, July, September and November, and tend to be towards the end of the month on a Thursday. Deadlines are usually 2 weeks before the meeting date.
If your application is successful, you can expect to receive your grant soon after the meeting date. We’ll let you know when to expect the transfer of funds in your grant offer e-mail.
How to apply?
All applications must be made via our online application form and must be submitted before the deadline if you wish it to be considered at a specific meeting. The Trust is currently very oversubscribed so the deadline date and time are strictly being enforced. The application form can be found on our Apply For Funding page – please read through all the information on that page before using the form.
All grant payments are made via BACS and you must be able to provide proof of your organisation’s bank details with your application. We require you to acknowledge safe receipt of the funds and to complete a short online monitoring report if requested.
The Trust’s financial year runs from April to March and we can only consider one application per organisation per year (successful or unsuccessful) in order to be fair to all applicants. If your application is withdrawn prior to the meeting, you can re-apply at any point.
Latest from the Trust
Contact Us
The Trust’s staff work partly from home and partly from our office and meeting space in Budleigh Salterton. While we can accept post at our office, we’d prefer it if you didn’t send us any papers or other items as we don’t have storage for them. E-mail is our preferred method of communication wherever possible: info@nfct.org
We do not have an office phone number.
Both new applications and monitoring reports should be submitted via our online system.
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