We are not a partnership-led charity. But our work would not be possible without a network of small organisations across the four parishes who refer cases, support events, and occasionally co-fund our grants. Here is who they are.
For most charities, the word 'partnership' carries a particular weight: consortium bids, memoranda of understanding, joint programmes. For a small trust like the Kitchings General Charity, partnership means something quieter: a parish council that recommends households who might benefit from our hardship grants; a community foundation in Lincoln that occasionally writes us a cheque toward the Quiet Door; a Witham Valley benefice that lets us put leaflets on the church porch table four times a year. We do not have a partnerships strategy. We have a list of people whose telephone numbers we have known for years.
Below are the eight organisations who make the work easier across the four parishes. Each has a short note from the trustees on what we ask of them, and what they do for us in return. Most of these relationships are decades old; one or two are newer. None is formalised by a contract.
The parish council recommends households to the trustees for hardship grants and sits on the small committee that reviews the trust's safeguarding policy every three years. Geoffrey Pacey, our chair, was previously a parish councillor for ten years; the present chair of the parish council, Mrs Lewis, attends our annual public meeting in February.
Our oldest partnership. The trustees meet in the Old Vestry of St Lawrence's, which was where the original Kitching bequest was first received in 1864. The church holds an annual collection for the trust on the last Sunday in November (the trust's nameday), traditionally raising around £180. The vicar of the Witham Valley Benefice, the Rev. Canon Helen Marsden, refers pastoral cases.
The smaller of our two parish churches, and the parish in which the original Kitching bequest specified the widows' pensions. All Saints' takes an annual collection in late summer for the pension fund. The PCC sometimes joins the trustees in the discreet identification of new pension recipients.
An occasional co-funder for the Quiet Door, typically through the Foundation's winter cold-weather programmes. We worked closely with the Foundation on the 2018-2020 fuel-poverty pilot described on our mission page; that pilot was wound up by mutual agreement in 2020. We continue to receive a small annual contribution from the Foundation's Lincolnshire Crisis Fund.
One of the two parish primary schools served by our Schools & Pupils Grants. The head teacher, Ruth Dawson, has been in post since 2017 and works closely with Katie East, our schools-fund trustee. The school's parents and friends association makes a reciprocal donation to the trust each summer term.
The four parishes lie within the Witham Valley Benefice, which serves a small group of village churches between Lincoln and Horncastle. The benefice's clergy and lay readers are an important source of pastoral referrals for the Hardship and Quiet Door funds, and a useful sounding board for the trustees on safeguarding questions.
Children's services and adult social care occasionally refer households to the trust for hardship grants — usually a particular short-term need that the statutory system is not equipped to meet quickly. The trust does not duplicate statutory provision. Our small grants are a supplement, not a substitute, and we are careful to say so.
The Heritage Group is a small voluntary group that maintains the abbey ruins and the local-history archive. They make a regular small donation to the trust each year, traditionally announced at their AGM in March. They are also our most frequent supplier of long-form essays for the Letter from Bardney.
We are a small trust and we do not enter many formal partnerships. But we are happy to talk with any organisation working in or near the four parishes whose work overlaps with ours. The trustees discuss any formal proposal at one of the four quarterly meetings; please write so that we can signal where yours sits in the cycle.
Bardney · Southrey · Tupholme · Bucknall