Merriman Charitable Foundation

The Merriman Charitable Foundation is a grant-making charity with a mission to enable positive change through flexible funding for education, health, environment, and poverty relief across the UK and overseas. Its core values emphasize pragmatic responsiveness, trustee-led discretion, and empowerment of frontline charities delivering tangible impact for underserved communities. Driven by a philosophy of unconstrained support for charitable innovation, it prioritizes capacity building, core costs, and project-based interventions that advance education, hospice care, public health, conservation, and poverty alleviation, believing sustainable change arises from adaptable, needs-led partnerships fostering resilience in children, young people, and vulnerable families.

It supports advancing education through training initiatives, after-school programs, and skills development for children and young people aged 5-25 facing barriers like poverty or learning challenges, including SEND education and employability training to prevent youth unemployment. In health, it funds hospice care providing respite, palliative counselling, therapeutic activities, and peer support for patients and families with complex health needs, terminal illnesses, or chronic conditions. Environmental priorities include conservation projects, heritage preservation, green space initiatives, and community-led climate action addressing biodiversity loss and sustainability for rural and urban ecosystems. Poverty relief encompasses food insecurity interventions, homelessness prevention, overseas aid for famine relief, and family support programs tackling financial hardship, social isolation, and basic needs for low-income households, refugees, and care leavers, emphasizing preventative outreach, community development, and holistic relief models.

With no published exclusions beyond general charitable purposes, it distinctly avoids rigid thematic boundaries, favoring generalist flexibility over specialized silos. Priorities target children and young people in education or crisis, hospice users with complex needs, impoverished families, and environmental stewards in diverse communities. Unique as a family-guided funder with broad UK-overseas scope, it champions grassroots service delivery, evidence-based conservation, trauma-informed health care, and inclusive poverty interventions led by organizations demonstrating direct beneficiary impact and adaptive innovation.