It started with a challenge - and a man who couldn’t resist one.
In the summer of 1988, a retired RAF Squadron Leader sat down with a group of local volunteers and asked a simple question: what if the people who’d built this place helped to sustain it? Thirty-five years later, Tees Foundation is still answering it. Here’s a peak into the archives…
In the late 1980s, the Mott Foundation in America issued an unusual offer to communities across the UK: build a permanent charitable endowment of £1 million and they’d match it with $1 million of their own. The prize would go to the first three areas to get there.
Ken Kime OBE
In Cleveland, that gauntlet was picked up by Ken Kime OBE – a retired RAF Squadron Leader turned community champion, and one of the most influential figures in local voluntary life. His ambition was straightforward: harness the success of local industry to build something permanent for local people. Not a one-off fundraiser. Something that would still be working long after the people who started it were gone.
On 31 July 1988, the Cleveland Charities Trust was born, with a small group of willing volunteers around the table – Geoffrey Collins, Peter Gowland, James Grierson, Malcolm Bainbridge and Ron Norman, a local businessman who chaired the Teesside Development Corporation and would go on to shape the Foundation’s early direction more than almost anyone. Its rallying call: Keep it in Cleveland.
Within months, the region’s biggest employers were backing the cause. ICI, British Steel, Northern Electric, DuPont – the names that kept Teesside working. In October 1989, Tees Hartlepool Port Authority pledged £150,000. A year later, Les Bell became the Foundation’s first individual donor of real scale, giving £50,000 to create the very first named fund – a quiet act of generosity that set a template others would follow for decades.
Lady Gisborough came on board as a founding patron. Ron Norman became Chairman. The Foundation found its feet.
By 1993, total donations had passed £1.35 million. By March 1994 the Mott challenge was met – the endowment had broken through £1 million in value and the prize was won. Ron Norman was knighted the following year, a moment that meant a great deal to everyone who had worked alongside him to get there.
The money kept coming in – and more importantly, it kept going out. Into local charities, community groups and causes that would never have made it without that steady, unglamorous, reliable support. By 1998, grant-giving had passed £1 million. The endowment, meanwhile, kept growing.
As the area changed, so did the Foundation. It became Cleveland Community Foundation, then Tees Valley Community Foundation in 2003, reflecting the wider geography it served. In 2002 it took on Peat Rigg Outdoor Centre, an outdoor education facility that has since given thousands of young people experiences they wouldn’t otherwise have had.
Peat Rigg
The Cash for Kids partnership with TFM became one of the most recognised charitable initiatives in the region – and was eventually rolled out nationally by Bauer Media.
When Covid struck in March 2020, the Foundation didn’t wait. Within days it had established the Teesside Covid Relief Fund, getting money to the community groups and voluntary organisations that were keeping people fed, connected and safe. When the cost of living crisis bit, Warm This Winter followed. The Foundation has always understood that responding quickly is part of the job.
When CEO, Hugh McGouran joined the then Tees Valley Community Foundation, the endowment was valued around £6 million – it has now exceeded £20 million thanks to careful stewardship.
In 2024 the organisation entered its latest chapter as Tees Foundation, with Tees Million at the heart of it – a commitment to putting around £1 million a year directly into grassroots organisations across the region. The same founding principle, but sharper. More direct. More determined to reach the people and places that need it most.
Whatever the name on the door, the founding idea has never wavered and continues to enable Teesside to invest in itself.
Thank you to everyone, past and present, who have had or have a role in this journey. The story continues…
