Strategy

The Henry Smith Charity aims to bring about lasting change to people’s lives, helping them to benefit from and contribute to society. We achieve this by funding organisations that work with people to reduce social and economic disadvantage.

We want to help people for whom other sources of support have failed, been inappropriate or are simply not available. To achieve this we aim to make grants that work towards one or more of our key values.

Increasing resilience
Empowering people, encouraging integration and personal independence, helping people to recover and move on.

Creating opportunities and life chances
Raising aspiration – equipping people with new skills, unlocking and enabling potential, and providing the means to improve life circumstances.

Empowering communities
Strengthening and connecting communities and making people feel valued, providing opportunities for social connections and relationships, encouraging participation and inclusion.

In 2017 we launched a new Main Grants Strategy that sets out how we want to achieve this mission through our largest two grants programmes; Improving Lives and Strengthening Communities.

Our Main Grants Strategy is available to download on the right hand side of this page and includes our values and principles as an organisation as well as more information about our funding priorities for the Improving Lives and Strengthening Communities grant programmes.