We are 47 staff and 2,960 volunteers, scattered between Bristol and Salisbury. We have been at this work since 1962, when a teacher named Hilda Pennell wrote a letter to her parish magazine asking who, in their village, was eating alone on a Sunday. That letter is still kept in our office. So is the spirit.
The Avon Trust was founded in 1962 by a small group of teachers, midwives and farmers along the River Avon. They were not a fashionable group. They had no donor strategy. They simply believed that small communities understood their own problems best — and that a modest, persistent organisation could quietly remove obstacles in the way of local solutions.
Six decades later, our work has grown — from one parish to 184 — but the conviction has not changed. We still meet at kitchen tables. We still ask the same first question: "What would feel different, in your daily life, if we got this right?"
1962
A single Sunday lunch club for older neighbours in Bathford grows, within five years, into thirty-one parish-level groups.
1978
Formal incorporation lets the Trust receive its first long-term grants and open an office on Pulteney Court — still our home today.
1991
A partnership with three tenant farmers begins what becomes a 34-year programme of chalk stream restoration across the Wessex catchment.
2004
Our education programme begins with one school in Twerton; today it operates across seven local authorities.
2017
We hand the grant-making pen to residents themselves. Panels of local people now decide where £1.2m a year goes.
2025
Our cumulative reach since 2018 passes 180,000 people — across welfare, education, elder support and environment.
Eight in ten of our trustees live in the communities we serve. Two of our trustees grew up in programmes we ran. The Trust pays no honoraria and reimburses only travel.
Chair of Trustees
Public health consultant, NHS South West. With the Trust since 2014.
Chief Executive
Formerly Director of Community Programmes, Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Joined 2019.
Director of Programmes
Twenty years in grassroots youth work in Bristol. Bridge to Sixth lead.
Director of Finance
Chartered accountant. Joined from the Wales Council for Voluntary Action in 2021.
"We are a small charity in absolute terms. But we have spent sixty years staying small enough to know the people we work alongside by their first names. That, I suspect, is our greatest asset, and the thing we will defend the longest."
Dr Naila Choudhury · Chair of Trustees
There are many ways to belong to this work — as a donor, a volunteer, a partner, or simply a reader of our fortnightly letter.
