How a couple’s Cornwall legacy fund passed £1 million

Two decades ago, Rae Sedel and John Collings set up a fund with a simple aim, to back the small charities and community groups doing work nobody else notices. Neither of them lived to see what it became. This month, the fund they started has passed £1 million in grants across Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, and it is still growing.

A fund that outlived its founders

The Sedel-Collings Foundation was established in 2006 by Rae Sedel and John Collings, with a clear mission to empower and sustain vital community services. Both founders died in 2021. Since then, the foundation has continued under four dedicated volunteer trustees, who work closely with Cornwall Community Foundation to keep the fund managed with the same vision and values it started with.

That partnership is why the money reaches the places it does. CCF holds the local knowledge of small, grassroots organisations that a foundation on its own would struggle to find, and the Sedel-Collings trustees supply the funding and the trust to back them.

Two funds, two different jobs

The Sedel-Collings Foundation now supports Cornwall through two dedicated funds managed by CCF. The Sedel-Collings Fund gives grants to small charities and grassroots organisations working on mental health, suicide prevention and women’s empowerment, as well as tackling loneliness, disadvantage and social isolation.

In 2025 alone, that fund distributed over £193,000 and helped 6,191 people, with a particular focus on mental health projects and food poverty reduction.

The second is the recently created Support the Supporters Fund, built on a simple idea, that the people helping others need support too. It invests in the wellbeing, resilience and capacity of frontline staff and volunteers working with people facing some of life’s hardest challenges, so they can keep delivering the services their communities depend on.

Alongside its own two funds, the foundation also contributes to other partners’ funds, including the Care Leavers Fund, which provides financial support and practical help for young people leaving care as they move towards independent living, education and employment.

Seeing the impact first-hand

Earlier this month, Amy Buzza-Blackwell, Philanthropy Director at CCF, and Lisa Dymond, Grants Officer, joined the Sedel-Collings trustees on a visit to several organisations that have benefited from their funding. The group called in on The Pearl Exchange in Bude, The Old Bank in Camelford, Carefree Cornwall in Redruth, and West Cornwall Women’s Aid and YMCA Cornwall in Penzance, meeting the people behind each project and seeing what the Foundation’s money actually does once it lands.

YMCA Cornwall was one of those to say thank you. “On behalf of all the residents and staff at YMCA Cornwall, we wanted to say a huge thank you to the Sedel-Collings Foundation for helping us support young people at risk of homelessness,” the charity said. “Over the past two years we’ve received over £18,000 of funding to support the work we do and we are all incredibly grateful.”

More than a cheque

The trustees’ involvement goes further than writing grants. They have regularly stepped in to support projects that narrowly missed out on funding elsewhere, so valuable community work can still go ahead. They also share their own knowledge and expertise with the organisations they fund, something that has become as valued as the money itself.

Over the years, Sedel-Collings funding has helped The Old Bank in Camelford restore its community food larder, helped Georgia’s Voice expand its reach, funded outdoor nature and wellbeing sessions at Falmouth Food Co-op’s Loveland project, and supported The Hugs Foundation to recruit a full-time Youth Facilitator. That investment in The Hugs Foundation alone has enabled more than 642 hours of wellbeing interventions, supporting 109 young people. They are just a handful of the projects the Foundation’s generosity has touched.

Annie Little, a trustee of the Sedel-Collings Foundation, said the milestone reflects a growing understanding of the need across the county. “The more organisations we visit and the more people we meet, the more we see both the scale of the need and the extraordinary work being done to address it,” she said. “Our partnership with Cornwall Community Foundation is central to this. Their knowledge of local communities helps us ensure that our support reaches the organisations where it can make a real difference.”

Amy Buzza-Blackwell, Philanthropy Director at Cornwall Community Foundation, added her own thanks. “Words cannot express how grateful we are to the Sedel-Collings Foundation for their continued partnership and generosity,” she said. “Their unwavering commitment to helping people and strengthening communities across Cornwall is truly inspiring. We are incredibly proud to work alongside the trustees, and to see the life-changing impact their support continues to have on so many individuals and organisations.”

As Annie put it: “Reaching £1 million is a wonderful milestone but we very much see it as part of an ongoing commitment.”