Woodleigh Impact is a charitable foundation, committed to funding the most impactful organisations.  Our priority cause area is poverty in very low income countries.  Because we are a small but hands-on foundation we have taken the strategic decision to focus solely on one country, which is Sierra Leone.  We are also interested in contributing to the prevention of climate breakdown, particularly through emerging social movements, but are not currently funding any organisations in this area.

We look for small to medium-sized organisations with a turnover of less than about £1 million, with outstanding leadership and strong community connections.  We don't have an application process but instead use our own research and connections to identify organisations that may be suitable for our funding, then seek to gain a thorough understanding of their work.  From our conversations in Sierra Leone we also seek to identify promising interventions which have potential for demonstrable high and sustainable impact, and may provide funding to help people or existing organisations to launch them.

The organisations we support will typically be either grass-roots or founder-led.  We prefer to support organisations that are focussed on doing a small number of very effective things well.  They will be able to clearly explain the problem(s) they seek to address and why they are important, know why their solution is the best one, and evidence their theory of change.  We like funding work which is neglected by other funders, and are willing to fund activity which we consider has a small chance of having a very high impact, even where there is a risk of no positive outcome.

Woodleigh Impact was established by the Clarke family in 2021.  We typically fund around a dozen organisations each year.  Our annual grants are usually in the range £2,000 to £10,000 but we may allocate more for genuinely scalable activities.