One of the more unusual requests considered by the trustees of your charity, the Freemasons Charity Yorkshire North & East Ridings (or FCYNER as it is more familiarly known) at their December meeting was for help to purchase a horse for the The Unicorn Centre in Middlesbrough, a member of the Riding for the Disabled Association.

Ferrum Lodge had already donated £1,000 to the Centre and applied to FCYNER for additional funding. Some of the horses at the Centre were of an age where they needed to be retired to ensure a good quality of equine therapy for both the young and disabled people who use the service and a new, younger horse was needed. The trustees were impressed with the application and agreed to grant an additional £1,500 to the cause, bringing the total to £2,500. And in January the MCF agreed to a further £2,500 in match funding bringing the new total to £5,000. The only remaining question is what name will they give to the horse?

There is a misconception that the FCYNER offers “match funding” for petitions from Lodges and Chapters. This is not strictly true, as can be seen by the horse example above, where the trustees agreed to a larger grant. Larger, or sometimes smaller, grants can be awarded depending on the strength of the case put forward by the Lodge. The MCF does offer match funding in certain cases but FCYNER can grant as little or as much as the trustees see fit.

Ferrum Lodge had also donated £250 to the Middlesbrough Foodbank to assist with the purchase of food items for people on the poverty line and those in crisis in the run-up to Christmas. Once again, the trustees were impressed with the application and agreed to grant an additional £500 bringing the total to £750.

The Dalescare Centre in Bedale provides social care, on a daycare basis, for independent older people. As you can imagine, this involves a warm space in the winter months and so when disaster struck and their heating boiler broke down Beresford Peirse Lodge immediately stepped in with a donation of £1,000. The FCYNER trustees were happy to provide an additional grant of £1,000 towards a new boiler as the old one was beyond economic repair and the MCF has contributes a further £2,000 bringing the total to £4,000.

The trustees also agreed to three further grants in December: Peace Lodge had donated £200 to the South Cleveland Heart Fund, which supports The James Cook University Hospital by providing equipment and training, towards the cost of a defibrillator for the Newbridge Court shopping centre in Middlesbrough and the trustees agreed to grant a further £200; Ayton Lodge had donated £350 to Yatton House in Great Ayton, a local charity affiliated to MENCAP, who provide, among other things, art therapy and media skills including photography, videos and access to digital technology and the trustees agreed to an additional grant of £350; and St Saviour Installed Masters Lodge had donated £240 to the local Salvation Army to purchase TLC teddy bears for their Christmas toy appeal and the trustees agreed to grant another £240 to buy more TLC bears for the appeal.

It was particularly pleasing to see a petition from an Installed Masters Lodge as this shows that any Lodge or Chapter can seek funding for their local good cause. The next round of funding will be in the New Year so let’s see a few more applications from Lodges throughout the Province and possibly from a few Chapters as well. Application forms are on the FCYNER website and need to be submitted by 21 February to be considered in the next funding round. The remaining application deadlines for 2025 are 23 May, 22 August and 7 November.