Archives for September 2020

The Rank Foundation to benefit from DCMS funding scheme

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The Rank Foundation is to benefit from the government’s DCMS £85 million Covid charity match-funding scheme.

The Rank Foundation is one of nineteen funders, foundations and philanthropists who are partnering with the Government’s Community Match Challenge scheme. The fund is part of the £750 million package of support announced by the Chancellor to support the sector.  The Rank Foundation has been awarded £5 million.

The Rank Foundation will create a new programme, the Time to Shine Covid-19 Resilience Programme, and will distribute a total of £10 million to small and medium-sized charities and social enterprises, primarily to those within their network, RankNet.

The new grants programme will support 200 charities and social enterprises with urgent and immediate financial needs.  Those organisations that are facing unprecedented demand for services or those that are facing a significant reduction income as a result of the pandemic, will benefit from the programme.  In addition, 200 charities and social enterprises will take part in the Time to Shine Leadership Programme, creating new, meaningful jobs when the social sector needs them most.

Time to Shine is a UK wide leadership programme that is run by the Rank Foundation, supported in partnership with the National Lottery Community Fund and working with the social sector, where a strong emphasis is placed on personal and professional development. It is designed to address the following:

  • A specific organisational development need, working with a charity or social enterprise.
  • To enable a Time to Shine Leader with the right skills mix, talent, and work ethic, who is currently under-employed to experience a 12-month full-time paid position within a supportive social sector work environment.
  • To provide an opportunity for talented people to consider the social sector as a career of first choice.

Caroline Broadhurst, Deputy CEO of the Rank Foundation stated, ‘we are delighted to be part of this collaborative approach to build resilience within the social sector, in the face of the pandemic.  The dual offer of immediate, short-term and urgent grant funding, combined with an investment in the social sector leaders of tomorrow, through the Time to Shine Programme, will help create the best conditions for charities and social enterprises to not only survive but thrive beyond 2020.’

For further information please contact communitymatchchallenge@rankfoundation.com

Handling Covid19 – Clean Break

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This week, we are shining the spotlight on Clean Break, a charity based in London. Clean Break uses theatre to keep the subject of women in prison on the cultural radar, helping to reveal the damage caused by the failures of the criminal justice system.


Clean Break is a women’s theatre company, founded in 1979 by two women prisoners who believed in the power of theatre to transform lives. Their vision is of a society where women can realise their full potential, free from criminalisation. Through theatre workshops and projects in prisons and the community which build confidence, resilience and wellbeing, Clean Break transforms the lives of women who have experienced the criminal justice system or have been identified as at risk of entering it. The team ordinarily work with 70 women each week as part of their weekly Members Programme. They have 10 full time and 11 part time staff and are usually supported by around 40 volunteers.

“We pursue our vision by producing ground-breaking theatre which puts women’s voices at its heart and creates lasting change by challenging injustice in and beyond the criminal justice system”

Photo Credit: Clean Break

The Members Programme is delivered from trauma-informed, women-only studios in Kentish Town. The Programme runs in ten-week sessions, and each week Clean Break will host workshops in Introduction to Drama, Advanced Theatre, Writers Circle, and Health & Wellbeing, as well as running a Young Artists Development Programme. The sessions are designed to help members cope with the long-term issues that can underpin women’s involvement in the criminal justice system, such as mental ill health, domestic abuse or violence, poverty, or alcohol or drug misuse.

The Coronavirus pandemic has meant that Clean Break has been forced to make some big changes to their programme delivery. They swiftly moved their sessions online and began to offer member support remotely. This was a challenge as many of their service users already struggle with isolation; and the crisis also presents challenges in coping with long-term issues. The sessions now include: 3 online creative workshops per week, members support in the form of check-ins, Zoom 1:1’s, and care packages, as well as new creative projects which foster connectivity and community. The plan is to maintain this service until the team are able to offer a reduced, in-person version of their Member Programme that they can run alongside their virtual workshops.

The biggest organisational challenge has been financial. Clean Break’s largest unrestricted income is hiring out their building (ordinarily generating £125K per year) which came to an abrupt halt in February. Other financial challenges have included the loss of donations as funders have diverted money to emergency delivery; a reduction in capacity as Clean Break have furloughed 76% of their staff; and loss of further trading income as they do not expect to be able to run training courses or earn box office income from theatre productions for a good while yet.

“Emergency funding support from both existing and new funders has been essential to navigate this crisis and stabilise our organisation; funders such as the Rank Foundation have been absolutely vital in protecting our resilience, securing our future, and making sure that we will be able to return to a full Members Programme as soon as possible.”

For more information about Clean Break, please visit www.cleanbreak.org.uk

You can also follow on Twitter @CleanBrk, Instagram @CleanBrk, Facebook, or find them on LinkedIn.

If you’d like to contact someone at Clean Break for more information about their work, or supporting them, please contact Head of Development and Communications Sally Muckley at sally.muckley@cleanbreak.org.uk

Rank Memorial Award Winners 2020

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It is with great pleasure that we announce the winners of the Rank Memorial Award 2020. This year, the Memorial Award criteria had a particular focus on resilience, in addition to the general criteria of “exploring a specific area of personal interest, relating to our work that will serve to inspire, educate or promote the interests, values or ethos of the Foundation.”

Despite the lows of lockdown and the current Covid19 crisis, the Memorial Award received more applications than ever before which in turn made it particularly difficult to select a winner. Therefore, we are delighted to announce that the selection committee has awarded three Memorial Awards at £6,500 each to Joe Russo, Hannah Ciotkowski and Geraldine Cooper.

Joe Russo

Joe, founder of Major Grant recipient organisation Enthusiasm Trust, will be heading to Los Angeles and Glasgow to explore two organisations whose work, philosophies and aims particularly resonate with Joe’s own experiences of supporting disadvantaged young people at risk of exploitation and gang association. In LA, Joe will be spending time with Homeboy Industries, an organisation that aims to provide hope, training and support to formerly gang-involved and previously incarcerated men and women, allowing them to redirect their lives and become contributing members of the community. In Glasgow, Joe will be spending time with the Scottish Violence Reduction Unit, who specialise in tackling the problem of knife crime and is a national centre of expertise on violence.

Hannah Ciotkowski

Hannah, current Time to Shine Leader at Kissing it Better, will be heading to Northern and Central Australia where a growing number of older people suffer from chronic loneliness. Hannah’s current role at KIB looks at offering young people meaningful volunteering experience inside hospitals and care homes. Since the Covid19 pandemic, KIB has had to adapt their services, and set up a ‘volunteering from home’ programme, with Hannah running this for Duke of Edinburgh participants to support elderly people virtually. Hannah’s main aim in Australia would be to learn from isolated, elderly communities in the Northern Territory and other more remote areas of Australia, many of whom have had to cope with serious isolation issues all their lives. She will also be including a visit to Professor Brian Dolan who works in Australia on the ‘End PJ Paralysis’ campaign – an initiative that encourages older patients to wear their own clothes in hospital, as well as visiting ‘The Last 1000 Days’ project that charts the importance of giving older people the best chance of making the most of their last 3 years of life. In addition to this, Hannah will work with young Australians who are already volunteering from home, looking at the way they are successfully supporting the most vulnerable in their society.

Geraldine Cooper

Geraldine, 2019 Time to Shine Leader at Newington Day Centre, will be traveling to San Francisco, Belgium and Liverpool to find out how other countries experience and cope with dementia within their population. Geraldine will visit the Alzheimer’s Association in San Francisco for a fortnight to volunteer with them in the lead up to ‘The Longest Day’ fundraising event, where thousands of participants from across the world come together to fight the darkness of Alzheimer’s through an activity of their choice. She will then move on to The Flanders Centre of Expertise on Dementia in Belgium for 5 days, to see in person how their model works, speak to residents, staff and other members of the community to see how they feel this new holistic model of care for people living with dementia works for them. Then finally, Geraldine will then travel to The Centre for Collaborative Innovation in Dementia Living Lab at Liverpool John Moore University. She will spend 4 days visiting the lab and discover how they work with people with dementia to co-create tools, apps and resources which will improve their day to day experience of living with dementia. 

We would like to congratulate Joe, Hannah and Geraldine on their successful applications and we will be hearing from them during and after their travels.