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Masonic Charitable Foundation
The Masonic Charitable Foundation (MCF), the Freemasons’ Charity, builds better lives by encouraging opportunity, promoting independence and improving for Freemasons, their families and the wider community.
Funded entirely through the generosity of Freemasons and their families, the MCF helps to improve the lives of thousands of people every year in England, Wales and overseas by working in partnership with some of the country’s biggest charities as well as local causes across England and Wales. The MCF also helps to fund the vital work of hospices, funds medical research and regularly contributes to appeals for humanitarian or disaster relief worldwide.
The MCF aims to be a force for good by providing support, care and services to Freemasons and their families in need, and supporting other charities to help the most disadvantaged people in society.
Supporting communities
Through the work of the MCF, Freemasonry is helping to tackle some of society’s most important issues through grants to local and national charities, and partnerships with leading organisations in the sector.
With grants totalling around £5.5 million each year, the MCF helps thousands of disadvantaged and vulnerable people to live happy, fulfilling lives and participate actively in society.
The MCF’s grant programmes for charities target funding where it is most needed, within the areas about which Freemasons care most passionately. The target areas are currently:
- Improving the health and wellbeing of older people with dementia and their carers
- Early years (children aged 0-5), with a focus on poverty and neglect
- Children affected by Domestic Abuse
- Children with special educational needs and disabilities
- Medical research into childhood diseases and conditions
- Funding care services in the hospice sector
To ensure Freemasonry’s funding has the greatest impact possible, the MCF awards grants to a range of local and national charities. To assist its funding, the MCF has formed partnerships with leading organisations in the charity sector, including Hospice UK, Home-Start UK, the Cranfield Trust, Age UK, The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award and medical research.
Since its inception in April 2016, from the four long standing Freemasons’ Charities, the MCF has given around 5,000 grants to local and national charities on behalf of Freemasons and their families totalling around £50,000,000.
Responding to need
In addition, funding has been provided to over 40 disaster relief appeals in England, Wales and overseas in response, to flooding, earthquakes and other natural disasters. Freemasonry, through the MCF’s work, has continued to champion groundbreaking research and the scientists of tomorrow, by funding PhD studentships in partnership with leading charities and organisations that are creating a brighter future for many people affected by degenerative diseases.
To commemorate 300 years of Freemasonry in 2017, the MCF awarded an additional £3m to local charities in addition to its main grant-making programmes, inviting members of the public to vote on the distribution of funds.
In response to Covid-19, the MCF has worked in partnership with UGLE and local Freemasons to allocate £3.6m to projects and charities that have responded to, or been affected by, the pandemic.
Read some of the remarkable stories from across the country of how our members came together during the Covid-19 pandemic to help their communities.
Supported by the MCF, Teddies for Loving Care (TLC) provides cuddly bears to A&E departments for medical staff to give to young children. Teddies for Loving Care
The bears are often used by staff to calm children down, reward them for being brave, and – in some cases – demonstrate procedures. The TLC teddy has become a useful tool for medical professionals and a real comfort for children. Most of the money raised to purchase and distribute the teddies comes from Freemasons themselves through lodge donations and fundraising events.
Lifelites
Lifelites is a charity with its roots in Freemasonry as it was originally started as a millennium project of the Royal Masonic Trust for Girls and Boys.
Since it became a charity in its own right in 2006, Lifelites has worked to ensure that children with life-limiting and life-threatening conditions using palliative care services throughout the British Isles have access to specialist assistive technologies to help them to play, to create, and to communicate.
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