Annual Review 2007

Since its inception in 1990, the Foundation has concentrated its efforts on trying to make an impact on the lives of single homeless people in Greater London and those who are vulnerable to homelessness by assisting the agencies that provide services to them. We do this through a combination of direct grants and commissioned educational and technical assistance activities, under what we call the Impact Programme.

The Foundation is a charitable company which also has a wholly owned subsidiary undertaking, Bramah House Ltd. This is engaged in letting office accommodation either to other charities at discounted rents, or to commercial organisations to generate funds. It also provides a vehicle for the delivery of some aspects of our training and development support under the Impact Programme.

Activities and Achievements during 2006/07

During 2005/06 we commenced a major review of our programmes that came to fruition in 2006/07. Aware that we only have limited financial resources to call upon, the Board decided that it was important to focus our support in order to have an impact within selected areas.

Over several years we had built a strong programme of Organisational Strengthening – helping homelessness agencies build capacity to deliver their missions more effectively – and this remained one of the main thrusts of our work in 2006/07. Following an extensive review of options, we also developed an entirely new workstream – to enhance the effective use of the Private Rented Sector for single homeless people.

In both of these strands we sought to achieve through a combination of grant support to homelessness agencies and through research, training, and building & disseminating knowledge and good practice. A third strand – Research and Special Grants – allowed Directors to support other initiatives of merit outside of these primary workstreams.