Excellent! - excellentdevelopment.com

We are delighted to announce that we have won the support of two long-term funders to help with the expansion of our operations and promotion of our holistic development model. Andrews Charitable Trust (ACT) and the Four Acre Trust have jointly committed to fund Excellent's work with £0.5M over five years in a venture philanthropy style investment.

This investment is not for our direct charitable work, but will enable Excellent to invest in its infrastructure and operational processes. Funds for our charitable activities will remain vital to continue and expand our work, however the investment will help make the work more sustainable in the long-term. Furthermore, because of this generous donation, more of every donation we receive will go directly to supporting community projects in Africa.

Sian Edwards, Director of ACT commented, "Excellent Development is working in Kenya to promote the ability of rural communities to improve their future livelihoods by an innovative mix of soil and water conservation techniques and social development work.
ACT is happy to be involved at this stage, investing in the organisation's ability to sustain the excellent work that they have begun in Kenya and to be in a position to promote the model more widely."

Projects to be funded by ACT and Four Acre include a move into dedicated office space in the UK and Kenya; investment in broadening fundraising activity; support for research and advocacy. Excellent also plans to open fundraising branches in other countries, with the USA and Australia at the top of the list. We will also expand our expeditions to Africa and be able to further develop our TreeDuty and TreeRelief brands.

Simon Maddrell, Executive Officer, commented, "This is an exciting step for Excellent. Having gone through such huge growth in our first 5 years, this investment will help us stabilise the organisation, enabling it to become sustainable with much less dependence on its founders."

Simon also added a note of caution, "whilst this is a tremendous input of capital - none of it is for our direct operational work, so it is vital that we continue to raise money for dams, trees and terracing."