We love to hear your questions! We’ve tried to answer as many as possible here, but if you have more please drop us a line.

The Room’s annual membership is £1000. For those who are able and inspired to give more, higher donations to our grants fund are welcomed. Please visit our Membership page for more information. We also have a small number of matched memberships available at £500 (see below for more information).

The Room follows a collective philanthropy structure. Donations are pooled, funding is granted directly to local initiatives, and members are invited to play an active role in deciding where that money goes.

100% of your upfront membership donation goes into The Room’s grants fund. Our grants fund is held and administered by Prism the Gift Fund (see below) and is ringfenced for charitable grants to exceptional small charities supporting women, children and young people across Oxfordshire.

The Room is run by unpaid volunteers, which means our running costs are very low. This allows us to send 100% of your upfront donation directly to the grants fund, so your gift makes the maximum possible difference.

Any Gift Aid we receive on top of your membership donation helps cover our essential running costs – such as compliance and financial administration, printing, web hosting, insurance, and accounts.

If you’d like more detail about how we cover our expenses, we’d be very happy to share – just get in touch.

We recognise that £1,000 is a meaningful amount of money. For many people, it may be the largest single charitable gift they have made. That’s why we aim to ensure it has real impact. Through our collective giving model, your contribution becomes part of a significant grant supporting your community.

We also offer a range of ways to support you along the way. If you’d like to pay in instalments or share your membership with a friend, please drop us a line at contact@theroomoxford.org and we’ll be happy to guide you through the process.

For more ways to get involved please visit our Membership page.

We’re delighted to offer a Matched Membership Scheme. This allows you to join The Room with a £500 membership donation, or support the scheme by contributing £500 to help unlock a matched membership place for someone else.

Each matched membership increases the total funding available for our grants, helping to multiply the impact of every contribution.

Places are limited and offered on a first-come, first-served basis. To find out more, please email contact@theroomoxford.org.

We are very grateful to our donors for making this scheme possible.

If you’re a UK taxpayer, please tick the Gift Aid box at the JustGiving checkout.
This allows us to claim an extra 25p for every £1 you donate, at no extra cost to you.

Higher rate tax payers:
If you pay tax at the higher or additional rate, you can also claim back the difference between your tax rate and the basic rate on your donation through your self-assessment tax return.

UK government guidance on gift aid and how to claim your tax rebate if you are a higher rate tax payer can be found here.

Absolutely! On our Membership form, please enter your name at the top and then put your partner or sponsor’s name in the box labelled “Payment name if different to member name.” When you proceed to the JustGiving donation page, you’ll be able to enter your partner or sponsor’s name and card details for the receipt.

Our grants process is shaped by ongoing conversations across the local charity sector, best practice in funding, and input from members at key stages, including our Member Interest Survey, Open Grants Meeting, and final Member Vote.

We aim to shortlist at least three partner charities each year, who go through a due diligence process with Prism and The Room. One receives a larger Impact Grant (chosen by members), and the others receive Investment Grants. All grants are unrestricted.

Members who would like to learn more are welcome to join the Grants Team or sit in on a grants meeting.

You’re welcome to join any time. Our membership closes for a given cycle with our member vote in May and reopens for the new cycle shortly after.

The Room gives unrestricted funding because it leads to greater impact. When charities have the flexibility to use funds where they’re most needed, they make better decisions, respond faster, and build stronger organisations. Research shows many charities value unrestricted funding at least twice as much as restricted or project-based funding, because it reduces administrative burden and enables better long-term planning and stability. In short, it lets great organisations focus less on managing grants – and more on delivering meaningful outcomes and driving positive social change. You can learn more about unrestricted funding here.

One of our goals is high impact giving. By collectively funding a large grant, we can have greater impact in a selected area. In addition, when a small charity pieces together £50,000, for example, from as many as ten different sources, the charity has reporting requirements and related administrative expenses from each grantor, in addition to fundraising costs. An increased cost in the chain means less money ultimately goes to solve the problem. By giving one large grant, we can have more impact and keep both costs and administrative time low for the grant recipient and ourselves.

Many of our supporters are actively involved in the charitable and community sector, and we see this as a strength – it reflects the commitment, experience and insight that The Room attracts. However, we take governance and independence seriously. All committee and board members are required to declare any actual or potential conflicts of interest. Where they have a close affiliation with a charity eligible for consideration for a grant, they are required to recuse themselves from all discussions and decisions relating to that grant. This ensures that all funding is awarded fairly, transparently and in the best interests of The Room’s mission. A copy of our conflict of interest policy can be found here.

We love to hear of brilliant charities we may not have come across. If they fit our funding criteria then please do share them with us. If we aren’t already aware of them we will add them to our records and make sure they have appropriate visibility in the grants process.

We are sensitive to the time constraints of small charities, and our grants process is designed to be as proportionate as possible. We actively encourage partner charities to share feedback on our approach.

Once a grant is awarded, we maintain an open line of communication so partner charities can share updates and stories with The Room’s community. These are featured in our seasonal newsletters and across our social media platforms. We also help amplify their work by sharing skilled volunteer opportunities with our community, and by hosting collaborative events where they can share their work and stories.

The funds are held by Prism the Gift Fund (charity number 1099682). Prism was established in 2005 with the mission of increasing the flow of funds into the charitable sector by creating administrative efficiencies and is expert in administering the giving of groups of donors and established foundations.

At the end of our cycle, once our members have voted, The Room will instruct Prism to pay the grants to the charities chosen by members. Prism and The Room carry out due diligence on all finalist charities ahead of our member vote to ensure eligibility for funding and speed of payment.