Summary
Helping people in Oxfordshire prosper by engaging with green spaces and the rural environment
Aims and activities
Aims and questions
Aims and activities
The purpose of this fund is to open up the potential of nature for those who are struggling with their mental and physical health, whilst also protecting our environment and green spaces.
The positive effects of spending time in nature range from reducing stress or anger, improving physical health, helping to become more active, reducing loneliness, and improving confidence and self-esteem. Our green spaces also provide an opportunity to promote rural skills, training and employment.
Grants of up to £50,000 over two to three years are made available to grassroots charitable organisations across Oxfordshire, via an open and transparent grant-making process. Grantees range from established charities that have nature and horticulture at the heart of their core work, to small volunteer-led community groups that need to help to shore up their activity and increase their impact. All grantees have an income under £1m a year.
How to get involved
Oxfordshire Community Foundation (OCF) is seeking other funders to donate to this collective fund. The opportunity would particularly suit funders interested in supporting both “human-centred” work in health, education and poverty alleviation, alongside “nature-centred” work in ecology.
OCF is committed to convening this annual fund over the long term. We are currently working closely with 34 local community groups on their applications to the second round of Thriving in Nature grants, which will be paid in September 2025. We expect these applications to total over £700k, and have raised close to £250k for this year so far. We would like to be able to fund at least 40% of these applications, representing a target of at least a further £50k before September.
Potential partners can contact OCF's Deputy CEO Kate Parrinder for a discussion, at kate.parrinder@oxfordshire.org
Who's involved
Who was involved
This collective fund is hosted by Oxfordshire Community Foundation (OCF), and convenes a group of like-minded funders and donors to pool their funding together. It benefits from OCF's best-practice grant-making processes, which are inspired heavily by Gemma Bull and Tom Steinberg's Modern Grantmaking.
Several grant-making trusts with an interest in Oxfordshire have committed multi-year support to the fund, including the John Laing Charitable Trust; the HDH Wills Charitable Trust; and the Michael Bishop Foundation. This is in addition to contributions from individual philanthropists and local businesses.
Alongside our funding partners, we are working with the Trust for Oxfordshire's Environment to carry out ecology assessments of all grant applications; and with a team of volunteer mentors who are providing pro bono support to grantees with issues such as strategy, fundraising and impact measurement.
Learning and Resources
OCF is committed to ongoing learning from and between Thriving in Nature grantees:
- In March 2025, OCF published a progress report detailing the achievements of the first cohort of grantees so far. These grantees received multi-year funding in September 2024. The report summarises our learning from our six-monthly check-in with grantees, and can be found here.
- In May 2025 we held a celebration and learning event at Asthall Manor in Oxfordshire, which brought together Thriving in Nature grantees and funders to have honest conversations face to face. Details of this event, including notes from the workshop sessions, can be found here. We will convene a similar event in May 2026.
