The Anchor Community Connection Fund 

  

About Anchor

From the heart of the West Country, Anchor Butter was created in Westbury, Wiltshire.  The company has been churning milk and salt since 1886 with only two ingredients - milk and salt - used in their delicious blocks of butter.

The original recipe was created over 100 years ago by Harry Reynolds, a Cornish dairyman who was inspired to name the brand Anchor because of a tattoo on one of the worker’s arms.  Anchor is now the number one British butter brand, with butter made lovingly using 100% British milk.  A symbol of quality and excellence, the much-loved butter, cream and spreadables are a staple in almost every British household. 

Eaten and loved by British families and created using milk from British farms, the quality and deliciousness of Anchor butter products are rooted in their Britishness.  Anchor is primarily farmer-owned, and all products come from the sunny green hills of Westbury, Wiltshire, managed by British hard-working farmers and their families.

 

About the Anchor Community Connection Fund

Anchor's partnership with UK Community Foundations first began in 2021 with the aim of bringing people and communities together and strengthen local connections through food. 

With this in mind, £100,000 was distributed in 2022 to nine organisations via Wiltshire Community Foundation, seven organisations via Leeds Community Foundation and eight organisations via Heart of Bucks (Buckinghamshire) Community Foundation.

These projects include a wide range of food related activities, including cookery classes, provision of hot meals and raising awareness of the environmental impact of different foods (to name a few) – all successfully achieving the aim of bringing people together through food.

This year, we have been supporting communities across Devon, Lancashire, Merseyside and Northamptonshire.  Funding has gone to eight organisations via Devon Community Foundation, 13 organisations via Northamptonshire Community Foundations and seven organisations Community Foundations for Lancashire and Merseyside.

Community groups have included cake clubs, cookery classes, youth cafes, food education programmes, ongoing support projects for vulnerable community members, food hubs, and many more. 

 

 

Why core funding works best

Anchor has wanted to be led by the communities it cares about around the country.  To make the most impact, this fund has provided core resources to community groups rather than having specific project-targeted instructions. 

This works incredibly well on many levels.  It enables community foundations to talk with local groups about the big issues their service users are experiencing and explore how the funding will be most helpful to the area they support.  It also empowers local groups to decide for themselves what they want the resources to go towards, to plan more strategically and think more creatively about the impact they want to have in the longer term.  

We have found that, through this partnership, social isolation and immobility has remained a large issue for people in the years following the pandemic.  The groups that support elderly people, people with additional or complex needs, minoritised communities and low-income households, have used food as a way of checking in on their community members, resulting in more targeted support. 

Connecting through food can provide a friendly conversation with someone who is experiencing loneliness, connect bereaved people with counselling opportunities and ensure visitors have had at least one nutritious meal in their day.  This work needs long-term support from funders and plays a significant role in preventative care in the community.

One of our Anchor-funded projects, The Community Lunch in Buckinghamshire, shared their story and warmly invited us to one of their sessions to explore the impact of their inclusive lunch service to the community:

 

  

Learn more about Anchor's social purpose here