Where does your money come from?
Our assets derive from the philanthropy of the people of London. Around 1,400 separate charitable gifts and bequests, some of them 400 years old, were held by the 112 parishes within the City of London, their income to be used for the benefit of the church communities or, more often, the poor of those parishes.
During the 19th century, the City grew to be a world financial centre but the number of poor beneficiaries fell; some parishes had no residents at all. In 1878, a Royal Commission was appointed to investigate the parochial charities of the City of London and this led to our creation. We were then known as the London Parochial Charities and later on as City Parochial Foundation.
In 1986, following the abolition of the Greater London Council the Government provided us with an endowment of £10 million to continue supporting the capital's small community groups. This was set up as a separate charity and was called Trust for London.
Our staff and Trustees managed both City Parochial Foundation and Trust for London.
In July 2010 the two organisations were amalgamated to form a single organisation called Trust for London.