We’ve answered some of the questions we’re most often asked below. If there’s anything else you’d like to know, please drop us a line.

Annual Core Membership is an upfront donation of £1,000. If you would like to contribute more, you can choose your own donation amount when making your payment.

You can also pay in instalments or share a membership with a friend. We have a limited number of £500 Matched Memberships available (see below).

Please visit our Membership page for more information.

The Room is a collective giving community. Members’ donations are pooled into a collective grants fund, and members are invited to learn about local charities and play an active role in deciding where that funding goes.

Alongside funding, we draw on the skills, experience and connections within our community to offer practical support and open up new opportunities for the charities we support.

100% of your upfront membership donation goes directly to The Room’s collective grants fund.

Our grants fund is held and administered by Prism the Gift Fund and ringfenced for charitable grants to small charities working with women, children and young people across Oxfordshire.

The Room is entirely volunteer-led and our running costs are kept deliberately low. No money is deducted from your upfront membership donation to cover The Room’s operating costs.

Gift Aid received in addition to membership donations helps cover essential expenses such as compliance and financial administration, insurance, web hosting, printing and accounts.

If you’d like more detail about how our costs are covered, please get in touch.

Our Matched Membership Scheme makes a limited number of memberships available at £500, with the remaining £500 provided by donations specifically made to support the scheme.

You can join through the scheme or contribute £500 to help fund a Matched Membership for someone else.

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 the donors who make these memberships possible.

If you’re a UK taxpayer and eligible for Gift Aid, please tick the Gift Aid box when making your donation. This allows an additional 25p for every £1 you donate to be claimed at no extra cost to you.

Gift Aid received by The Room helps cover our essential running costs.

Higher-rate taxpayers: If you pay Income Tax above the basic rate, you may also be able to claim additional tax relief on your donation.

You can find UK Government guidance on Gift Aid and tax relief here.

Yes. On our Membership form, please enter your name as the member and your partner or sponsor’s name in the box labelled “Payment name if different to member name.”

When you proceed to the donation page, the person making the donation should enter their own payment details and complete any Gift Aid declaration in their own name, provided they are eligible.

Our grants process is informed by ongoing conversations across Oxfordshire’s charity sector, our funding criteria and input from members at key stages, including our Member Interest Survey, Open Grants Meeting and final Member Vote.

Each year we identify a shortlist of charities, which undergo due diligence with The Room and Prism the Gift Fund. One receives our larger Impact Grant, selected through the Member Vote, while the other finalists receive Investment Grants. Our grants are unrestricted.

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

You’re welcome to join at any point during our annual cycle. Membership for each cycle closes before our Member Vote in May.

Unrestricted funding gives charities the flexibility to use funding where it is most needed, whether that is delivering services, responding to changing needs, investing in staff or strengthening their organisation.

It also reduces the administrative burden associated with tightly restricted project funding and trusts charity leaders to make decisions based on their knowledge of the people and communities they serve.

This reflects our belief that some of the best solutions come from the people and organisations closest to the challenges.

You can learn more about unrestricted funding here.

Pooling our giving allows us to make a grant of a scale that would be difficult for many members to provide individually.

For a small charity, securing the same amount through numerous smaller grants can involve multiple applications, funding restrictions and reporting requirements. A larger, flexible grant can reduce that administrative burden and give an organisation greater freedom to plan, invest and respond to need.

Alongside our Impact Grant, we make smaller Investment Grants to the other charities reaching the final stage of our grants process.

Many people within The Room are involved in the local charitable and community sector, and those connections bring valuable knowledge and experience. We also take independence and good governance seriously.

Committee and board members are required to declare actual or potential conflicts of interest. Anyone with a close affiliation to an organisation being considered for funding must step away from discussions and decisions relating to that organisation.

You can read our Conflict of Interest Policy here.

Absolutely. We’re always interested to hear about exceptional small charities we may not yet know.

If an organisation meets our funding criteria, please share it with us. We’ll add it to our records and ensure it is considered as part of our wider grants research.

We recognise the pressures on small charities and aim to keep our grants process and reporting requirements proportionate.

Once a grant is awarded, we maintain an open relationship with our charity partners and invite them to share updates, learning and stories with The Room community.

Our support can also extend beyond funding. Where useful, we share their work with new audiences, connect them with relevant skills and expertise within our community, promote volunteering opportunities and create opportunities for collaboration.

We actively encourage our charity partners to give us feedback on our approach.

The Room is a restricted fund held by and operated under the auspices of Prism the Gift Fund, a registered charity (1099682) that administers our collective grants fund and provides the charitable infrastructure for our giving.

Before grants are awarded, The Room and Prism carry out due diligence on the finalist charities. Following the Member Vote, The Room instructs Prism to make the agreed grants to our selected charity partners.