FEATURED WORK

The Chacegrove Family Foundation

A CREDIBLE ONLINE HOME AND BRAND FOR A CLIMATE-FOCUSED FOUNDATION

The Chacegrove Family Foundation is a family-funded charity backing projects in climate change, sustainable land use and water. It had a basic website that did a job in the charity’s early days, but it had no brand of its own and no longer created the impression the trustees wanted as they looked to develop the Foundation further.

Lemongrass Media created a new WordPress site and a foundational logo from scratch, giving the Foundation a home that sets out its mission, spells out what it funds and meets the transparency expected of a registered charity.

LAUNCH PROJECT

About the
Chacegrove Family Foundation

The Chacegrove Family Foundation is a modest, family-funded charity set up in 2019 to support projects in three areas: combating climate change, sustainable land use and improvements in relation to water. It was created by Jonson Cox and family, drawing on a long career in the environmental and water industries and a belief in the power of individuals to make a difference. The Foundation takes its name from Chacegrove Wood in Devon.

Governed by four trustees who meet quarterly, the Foundation awards two to three grants a year towards project-specific costs. Having spent its early years making small awards to individuals, it has since refocused towards working with a smaller number of established organisations, funding programmes that meet its aims. It has backed standalone projects of its own alongside work with WaterAid and the RSA.

Hampshire RFU encountered several problems with their old website

The Challenge

The Foundation’s early website had served its purpose while the charity found its feet. As the trustees looked to develop the Foundation and work with more established organisations, they wanted a site and a brand that reflected those ambitions, so they decided to start again from scratch. They also had no logo or brand to build around.

The audience mattered more than the volume of it. The Foundation now speaks to established charities and organisations with a real track record, either in the UK or internationally. Those organisations weigh up a funder quickly and expect openness before they will spend time applying. The site needed to set out the mission and the three areas of focus plainly, make clear what the Foundation would and would not fund, show the kind of work it backs and carry the regulatory detail a careful charitable audience looks for. As a small team keen to keep administration costs low, the trustees also wanted to cut down the enquiries they received that fell well outside their criteria.

The Solution

We moved the Foundation onto WordPress so the trustees keep control of their own content, with our support team behind them. The design is deliberately plain and unshowy, in keeping with a thoughtful family-funded foundation rather than a corporate brand. We built the site around the one question a prospective applicant needs to answer: is this the right funder for us?

A brand from scratch

The Foundation had no logo, so we created one as part of the project, drawing on its connection to the natural environment. It now runs across the site and its documents.

A mission-led home page

The home page leads with the Foundation’s purpose and its three funding areas, so a visitor understands what Chacegrove is about within seconds of arriving.

Clear funding criteria

A dedicated page sets out plainly what the Foundation will and will not support, alongside the normal level of grant. Applicants can weigh their own fit before getting in touch, and the Foundation is upfront that a small team cannot acknowledge applications that fall outside its criteria. The clarity does the filtering, rather than a form that turns people away.

The projects they back

A funded-projects section shows the kind of work the Foundation supports, from WaterAid to the Charles Feinstein Award. It gives applicants a real sense of the standard and the type of project that fits.

Governance in the open

The constitution, the gifting and administrative policies, the registration certificate and the accounts are all published in full. For a registered charity speaking to a careful audience, that openness is part of what earns their trust.

The people behind the Foundation

A dedicated trustees section introduces the four people who govern the Foundation and decide what it funds. Their backgrounds in the environment, water, academia and international development show applicants the experience their proposals will be weighed against.

Result

The Foundation now has a live home at chacegrove.com that matches the care behind its work. It presents the mission across three clear funding areas, sets out the criteria, shows the initiatives it backs and makes its governance and accounts openly available. Applications come in by email, which suits a small team that wants to keep things simple. The brand we created runs throughout.

It is early in the site’s life, so the fuller measures of success will come with time. What is already clear is that a foundation which had never had a proper online presence now has one that stands up to the scrutiny its audience brings.

Let’s work together

If you are setting up or refocusing a foundation and need a website that
earns trust from the organisations you work with, contact us today.