Six small programmes
Every pound we grant passes through one of six small named programmes — six doorways to the same trust.
Our work is divided into six programmes for clarity, not for marketing. Each was set up at a different moment in our history; each has its own small budget; each is read by the Trustees together. The names below are how we file the work in our minute book.
Programme one · Winter
First Frost Fund
The First Frost Fund makes small fuel grants of £80–£240 to households in the parishes of St Martin's and St Edmund's between 1 November and 31 March. The fund opens when the first overnight frost of the season is recorded at the Met Office station in Boscombe Down, and closes at the end of March whether or not there is anything left.
Applications are referred to us by parish priests, school welfare officers, Citizens Advice Salisbury, Salisbury Foodbank, and Wiltshire Council adult social care. We do not accept direct applications — not because we are difficult, but because we want each case sense-checked by someone who knows the household.
Last winter, 142 grants were paid out, averaging £138 each, total £19,596. The smallest grant was £80 (a single missed gas-meter top-up); the largest £240 (a household waiting on a Universal Credit reassessment in mid-January). Eight applications were declined, in every case because the household was outside our two parishes — referred onward to Wiltshire Community Foundation.
Supported by: our own endowment income, the 2025–26 Winter Fuel Appeal, and a £2,000 partnership grant from Wiltshire Community Foundation's cold weather pool.
Programme two · Befriending
Sunday Doors
Sunday Doors is the Charity's only direct-delivery programme. Forty-two trained volunteer befrienders visit forty-two older neighbours in the two parishes, on a Sunday afternoon, for between one and two hours. The conversation is unhurried. The tea is always made by the person being visited. The volunteer brings the local paper and a few photographs of their week.
We started Sunday Doors in 2019 with four pairings. We are now at forty-two, which is the largest the trustees believe we can hold safely with one part-time coordinator. The average partnership lasts three years and four months; the longest now in its sixth winter.
Each befriender attends three months of training (six Saturday mornings, three to four hours each) led by our coordinator with input from Wiltshire Council adult social care. We carry standing DBS checks for every volunteer.
Supported by: our endowment, four small annual gifts from named donors, and the kind use of a meeting room at St Martin's Church House for volunteer supervision.
Programme three · Almshouse
Trinity Hospital Companion
Trinity Hospital, Salisbury — founded by Agnes Bottenham in 1379, on St Ann Street — is named in our governing scheme as a continuing recipient of the Charity's funds. We pay a standing quarterly stipend of £1,000 on the first working day of January, April, July and October, year in and year out. The stipend is index-linked to CPI and last raised, with the trustees' agreement, in October 2023.
Over the centuries the Charity has also funded occasional capital works at Trinity. In 1972 we paid the bulk of the cost of releading the chapel roof. In 2003 we contributed to a damp survey. In 2024 we paid for new oak benches in the courtyard, made by a Wilton joiner from a single fallen elm.
We do not interfere in the governance of Trinity, which has its own trustees and registered status (charity number 202110). Our role is to honour, year after year, what John Fricker directed in 1696.
Supported by: the endowment income, exclusively, on a standing instruction.
Programme four · Pantry
The Vestry Pantry
The Vestry Pantry is the parish pantry at St Martin's, run from the cleared north vestry of the church on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. Between thirty and fifty households a week call in. There is no referral required, no questions asked, no register kept of who came. The Pantry is run by the parish, not by the Charity.
Our role is small but specific: we provide an annual running grant of £4,800 toward fresh produce, the only category the parish struggles to source through Fareshare and local supermarket donation. We have paid this grant each year since 2021. We are committed to it through to at least September 2027.
The Pantry is one of the doorways through which our First Frost referrals arrive. Volunteers there often spot a household in early hardship and pass a name to our Clerk, with permission.
Supported by: our endowment. The Pantry itself is supported by the parish, Fareshare South-West, and supermarket donations from Tesco and Waitrose.
Programme five · Wellbeing
Cathedral Close Listening Walks
A small, slow, fortnightly walk through the Cathedral Close and the water meadows beyond. Twelve regular walkers, three trained listeners, one flask of tea per session. Two miles, roughly an hour and twenty minutes, on the second and fourth Saturday of the month between March and November. We do not walk in the dark or in heavy rain — the trustees take a view at 09.00 on the morning.
This is our newest programme, started in March 2023 after a conversation with Salisbury District Hospital's social prescribing team. The walks are by referral from the social prescriber or from a GP; we do not advertise them. The cohort is intentionally small. The listening is more important than the walking.
Walk leaders complete Mental Health First Aid training (two days, paid for by the Charity), refreshed every three years. We have three leaders on the rota.
Supported by: the endowment, and an annual £600 partnership contribution from Salisbury District Hospital's social prescribing fund.
Programme six · Discretionary
Quiet Quarter Fund
The Quiet Quarter Fund is our one-off discretionary fund — for the cases that do not fit any of the other five doorways. Each quarter the trustees set aside £1,800 for unexpected need, and we close the fund as soon as it is exhausted, never sooner.
In the last twelve months Quiet Quarter has paid for: a school uniform for three children of one family in a sudden housing transition; the repair of a gas boiler in a flat above a shop on Milford Street whose tenant was a long-standing Sunday Doors recipient; a coach fare to a hospice in Devon, for a husband to say goodbye; the replacement of a wheelchair cushion lost in the back of a community transport van; a child's funeral plot in a Salisbury cemetery, in 2024.
These are not pretty stories. They are the kind of small specific problems that fall outside every well-defined scheme but lie at the centre of what John Fricker had in mind in 1696. The fund exists exactly to meet them.
Supported by: the endowment, in full.
If you would like to support a particular programme, you can tell us on the donation form.
Or write to [email protected] and the Clerk will reply within five working days.