How we are funded

  • Published: 23.03.09

The King's Fund is a registered charity (no. 1126980). We fund our work from three main sources:

  • Income from ‘generated’ funds. This amounted to £5.0 million in 2007 and includes the returns earned on our investments (£3.2 million), income from hiring out our conference and catering facilities (£1.4 million) and rent received from other health-related organisations who share our headquarters building (£0.4 million).
  • Income from charitable activities. This amounted to £5.1 million in 2007 and includes fees paid for leadership programmes and events (£3.3 million), plus grants and commissions from a variety of organisations for particular policy or development projects (£1.9 million in total).
  • Our endowment. We are also able to spend from our endowment each year (£3.1 million in 2007); the amount is carefully managed from year to year to ensure the sustainability of our activities in the long term.

Another way of looking at how we fund our work is that currently just over half is funded by income from our activities (£6.9 million) and the rest is funded by income from our assets (£6.5 million), either directly or as investment income. This balance is set to change in the future, with more income needing to be generated from our activities to enable us to maintain and expand our work and services.

The King's Fund generates some of its income through partnerships with a range of organisations, and further detail on this funding source can be found on our Partnerships and fundraising page.

Our endowment

The King’s Fund was formed in 1897 as an initiative of the then Prince of Wales to support London’s voluntary hospitals. Donations in the first year totalled £227,000 – worth more than £20 million today – and high levels of donations continued to be made for the next 50 years or so.

After the NHS was established in 1948, The King’s Fund changed its focus to respond to the new needs of a predominantly tax-funded health service, and our major funding sources changed accordingly. In the early years, donations were distributed as grants, and when this declined, after 1948, the funds remaining (the ‘endowment’) were invested to provide both regular income and capital growth to support future initiatives.

Our endowment is the guarantor of our independence and so we invest and draw down from it carefully. The amount we use each year to support our activities is designed to ensure that our activities will be sustainable in the long term. In recent years, trustees have capped the support available as a proportion of The King's Fund’s net assets.

KEHF Limited

Our conference services are run by KEHF Limited, the wholly owned trading subsidiary of The King's Fund.

Further information

For more information about our income sources and investments please see our latest trustees' report (279 kb) [pdf] or contact Frank Gargent, Director of Finance and ICT, f.gargent@kingsfund.org.uk, tel: 020 7307 2499.