About Longleigh

An engaged and valued partner

Longleigh is a grant-making charity, established by the national social housing provider, Stonewater, in late 2015. We were formed against the backdrop of changes in the welfare system and significant reductions in public spending that resulted in vital support services scaling back and even disappearing altogether.

Our role was to use the vehicle of grant-making as a force for positive social change, enabling social housing tenants and communities access the support they needed, beyond their core housing needs. This was to be done by providing three different types of grants – Individual, Project and Research.

Being an independent charity meant that Stonewater’s teams could wholly focus on their work, being safe in the assurance that Longleigh would be dedicated to its remit. This helpful delineation and clarity of roles and purpose has progressed in the last five years but, collaboration and partnership working has always remained at the heart of the relationship. Since we were formed, there have been seismic changes across the world. The Covid-19 pandemic has been closely followed by the war in Ukraine and the cost-of-living crisis. And political turmoil in the UK was ever-present during 2022, resulting in sweeping changes in ideology and policy direction. As is often the case, the more vulnerable members of our communities have felt the impact of these global and national issues in disproportionately adverse ways.

There is no pleasure in saying that if the need for us was present back in 2015, we are needed just as much now, if not more. We know there are social housing providers that don’t have comprehensive solutions in place for how their more vulnerable tenants access enhanced support and services. The pride we do take in the hard work we have done over the last five years is to know that we stand ready to work in partnership with more social housing providers, to work together in enabling their tenants to thrive in their lives.

Our social mission is to support transformation in the lives of customers and communities and to be the charity partner to the social housing sector.

Our 2025 vision is to enable more lives to be transformed, across more communities, by continuously improving the difference we make and the value we bring to our partnerships with the social housing sector.

Our values are to be compassionate, collaborative, agile, insightful and ethical.

OUR KEY POSITION STATEMENTS:

We are a relational grant-making charitable foundation, dedicated to supporting the individuals and communities served by the social housing sector.

We work with our social housing sector donors to focus our grant-making and support on the issues that are adversely affecting the quality of life and aspirations of the individuals and communities they serve.

It is our programme of making grants to both individuals and organisations that enables us to support transforming a life at a time and a community at a time and, through our research grants, at a wider societal level.

We are more-than-a-funder, bringing our intimate knowledge and experience of service delivery within the social housing sector to the grant-making environment alongside providing in-depth and ongoing support to the projects we fund.

In our 2025 plan, we have four strategic aims:

• Be a valued and integral long-term partner to our donors in how they enable transformation in the lives of their customers and communities.

• Partner with more social housing providers, and their supply chains, so our model can reach more customers and communities.

Ethical

• Embed a learning culture so we can understand, improve and demonstrate the difference we make and share this with others.

• Improve the effectiveness and efficiency of our work through continual development and integration of systems.