The charitable foundation set up by Betchton entrepreneur Denise Coates handed out £l1.3 million to charities in 2023/4, its annual report has said, with the Leonard Cheshire home at Sandbach among the beneficiaries.
The Denise Coates Foundation, in its report for the year to 31st March 2024, said that Leonard Cheshire Disability received a grant of £600,000 to support a three-year implementation of assistive technologies at the Hill House service in Sandbach.
The report said that Leonard Cheshire – a health and welfare charity founded in 1948 by RAF Group Captain Leonard Cheshire VC – had successfully integrated its internally developed assistive technology clinical pathways, assessment, and delivery processes, as well as tiered support and training programmes for both users and staff, into Hill House.
A sensory room had been updated and now offered a more age and ability appropriate range of equipment and had been “very well received” by the users, said the report.
In total, eight sites and 94 residents are now supported by the Hill House Assistive Technology hub.
The foundation also continued to support the Douglas Macmillan Hospice, which provides services free of charge to adults, young adults and children living with a life-limiting illness in Stoke-on-Trent, north Staffordshire and surrounding villages, and runs the Donna Louise children’s hospice.
Two grants of £1.3 million and £300,000 were made to support the continued integration of the hospice with the Donna Louise Trust. The grants also funded the annual cost of a new wellbeing programme aimed at supporting palliative care residents to find “peace, comfort and fulfilment”.
An additional grant of £1 million was given to the Dougie Mac to support the launch of a specialist out of hours hospice rapid response service.
The grant will support the expansion of a community team for children and young adults covering Staffordshire and south Cheshire seven days a week; the expansion of dementia services to service more users; and the fit-out of a wellbeing room providing a restful space in the gardens of the children’s hospice.
St John Ambulance received a grant of £100,000 to fund the purchase of two new first aid vehicles. The new vehicles are based at the charity’s Rugeley hub, which provides support and first aid training to the residents of Staffordshire, as well as Shropshire and Wolverhampton. A community support unit and electric support car were purchased in September 2022. In the year to September 2023, both vehicles had covered over 17,000 miles, helping to deploy 1,614 of the 14,000 first aiders from those areas, and their equipment, to and from events.
Nature
Following previous commitments, £700,000 was granted to The Land Trust, a charity that manages green open spaces in partnership with local communities.
The grant was awarded as part of continued support for an ongoing project at Hassall Green Nature Reserve.
The programme focused on continuing Green Angels training courses and developing more in-depth community engagement activities.
As in previous years, the New Vic Theatre received £100,000 towards its award-winning Borderlines initiative. The scheme uses theatre to help people find new and positive ways to understand themselves, their communities and their responsibilities, and challenges destructive and anti-social behaviour.
New Vic Appetite, a Creative People and Places programme working with a range of local and national artists and communities to deliver an expanding menu of artistic projects to develop the appetite for the arts in Stoke-on-Trent, received a grant to support its A Magical Middleport Winter by funding the acquisition of two large-scale illumination installations.
A grant of £1.2 million was given to New Vic Theatre to provide support towards the capital costs of targeted environmental improvements, refurbishment of backstage dressing rooms and facilities and the upgrade and replacement of theatre lighting and sound technology.
The foundation provided a grant of £100,000 to FareShare Midlands, an independent charity that sources and redistributes good quality, in-date, surplus food that would otherwise go to waste, to support families and individuals. The grant covered capital costs for the purchase of eight vans from Tesco’s surplus van pool.
The Midlands Air Ambulance Charity received a grant of £500,000 to fund the remaining amount required to purchase a replacement air ambulance. The new air ambulance ensured that the charity maintained its helicopter-led service and continue saving lives throughout Staffordshire and the wider Midlands region. The Midlands Air Ambulance Charity funds and operates three air ambulances and critical response cars in the Midlands region.
Funds were provided to Opera Ventures to support its production of “Ainadamar”, which told the story of playwright and poet Federico Garcia Lorca and his friend and muse, Catalan actress Margarita Xirgu. Opera Ventures presented the opera to 6,527 people, smashing its target by 912 people, delivering on its aim of increasing engagement with the arts.
A grant of £400,000 was provided to Prevent Breast Cancer to cover the cost of the refurbishment of a training suite at the Nightingale Centre at Wythenshawe Hospital and Prevent Breast Cancer Research Unit. The new training suite was completed in January 2024. Between 300 and 500 trainees and staff from around the UK will benefit from the facility every year, with a medical focus on breast cancer prevention, diagnosis and treatment.
Tate received a grant of £300,000 to fund the Yiadom-Boakye exhibition at Tate Britain. The aim was to ensure that a new generation of children and young people were exposed to the artist’s work, encouraging conversations in the galleries around identity, race, community and creativity.
A grant of £100,000 was provided to The Children’s Hospital Charity, a charity that supports Sheffield Children’s Hospital, to fund specialist provisions that the NHS does not currently offer.
The grant will cover the costs of a bespoke garden for children and young people at the hospital.
The foundation also maintained its commitment to the Chronic Disease Research Foundation, an independent medical research charity. Grants of £4.1 million and £100,000 were made to fund a five-year ageing research project and to fund pilot projects, offering fellowships to appropriate candidates while supporting PhD students and related project grants.
The foundation also continued its support of a local medical research charity. The donation helped the institute to fund research projects.
The foundation continued its funding for bursary and scholarship schemes at three universities. Keele University, Staffordshire University and the University of Sheffield each received £200,000 to fund bursary schemes for undergraduates from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Overseas aid
Not all the donations went to the UK. Mothers2mothers (“m2m”) was awarded a grant of £1.5 million to fund a three-year programme to support the implementation of its Mentor Mother model, which helps to support women, adolescent girls and children’s health and wellbeing in Lilongwe District, Malawi.
During m2m’s 10-month reporting period, the project achieved a total reach of 73,470 clients (91% of the annual target of 80,131). During the implementation period, 26 Mentor Mothers and 20 adolescent peer mentors were trained and deployed in five health facilities.
Edmund Rice Development, a charity that proactively supports projects that tackle the root causes of structural power imbalances that have historically disadvantaged women, received a grant towards a three-year project. The project aims to contribute to the socioeconomic empowerment of 100 vulnerable women, youth and out-of-school adolescent girls by providing them with life skills through vocational skills training at the Senan Kerrigan Vocational Centre in Sierra Leone.
Hand in Hand, a UK registered charity raising funds to educate, mentor, train and empower orphaned and vulnerable young people from East Africa received a grant to support capital costs to fund a computer lab by replacing the current library/science laboratory.
A grant of £300,000 was given to The Zoological Society of London, an international conservation charity working to restore wildlife, to provide funding for essential equipment to support its wildlife health services programme.
Donations
The foundation receives its money from Bet365, the company Ms Coates founded.
On 26th March 2024, the foundation received two donations totalling £120 million. This will be held as a long-term investment, the return from which will be distributed to support charities/charitable activities that align to the objectives of the foundation.
As of 31st March 2024, the foundation’s total investment portfolio stood at £830 million, £196.2m higher than at the end of the previous financial period.
The foundation identifies charities locally, nationally or internationally (registered through UK charities) that it wants to support and also welcomes applications. Contact is made with charities, to discuss any projects/programmes that they are looking to undertake that the foundation may be in a position to support.
Charities are then invited to present to the foundation’s trustees with a proposal detailing how a grant would be of use to the charity and the benefits that it would deliver.
