"Doing the right thing by the people in our community."

Abbie, The Cumberland

Supporting our local communities

One of the ways we deliver our promise of ‘kinder banking’ is to support our local communities. We’re committed to donating a proportion of our net profits to help fund a wide range of activities and initiatives that help good causes around our region.

Our branches support community groups and charitable causes with donations of up to £250 which are considered and awarded on an individual basis by our branch teams themselves, and our Cumberland Community Fund offers strategic and community grants of up to £25,000 to larger projects.

If you’re thinking of applying to either of these funds, here’s what you need to know.

Applying for funding

How much can you apply for?

To ensure that our funding is spread fairly throughout our region, our branch teams can make donations up to £250.

However, larger grants maybe considered through our Charitable Foundation Fund. Further details on this fund can be found by clicking this **link**.
How to apply for a donation

To apply for a donation of up to £250 all you need to do is call into your local branch with an outline of your request in writing.

Alternatively, you can email your request through to our Community Team click here .

When we receive your request, we'll let you know when you will receive a response or if we require any more supporting information.
Types of requests we're unable to support
We generally don’t provide funding for:
- Organisations outside of our operating area;
- Applications which have received a donation in the last six to twelve months;
- Trips and holidays;
- Events that have already occurred;
- Sensitive, controversial or harmful requests, or those that could be a conflict of interest;
- Political or pressure organisations;
- Running costs including salaries and capital expenditure;
- Individuals further education/tuition/course fees.

Apply now for funding from our community fund

We also love to get our hands dirty and get involved!

Whether it's organising a delicious bake sale or a spot of gardening, our teams are fantastic when it comes to supporting and helping our local communities.

Community Day:

Each year, we offer everyone the opportunity to take a community day. This gives our teams the chance to go out and spend time supporting a charity or organisation of their choice.

They can do this individually, with others from their own team or even better, join forces with others from across the business. It's not only a fantastic way to help a local good cause, but a really nice way to get to know team mates better outside of the day to day, office environment.

What's brilliant to see when people use their community day is how much this benefits them and the people they are helping. It's definitely something we're really proud of!

If your group or organisation are looking for volunteers, get in touch by emailing our Community Team and see if it's something we might be able to help with.

Fundraising:

We also love to get regularly involved with a wide variety of fundraising activities to help local good causes within our communities.

And finally...

Keep an eye out for the latest updates on all things community.

We'll keep you updated here and across our social channels of some our latest donations and some of the exciting things that our teams have been up to. Whether it's taking advantage of their community day to help with local good causes or getting involved in local fundraising activities.