Carnegie UK Trust

The Carnegie UK Trust is an independent, endowed charitable trust based in Scotland. It is incorporated by a Royal Charter.

The Trust is one of over twenty foundations established by Scottish-born American steel magnate and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie. It is one of several trusts based in Dunfermline, Fife, where Carnegie was born in 1835. It shares purpose-built premises with the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland, the Carnegie Dunfermline Trust and the Carnegie Heroes Trust.

The Carnegie United Kingdom Trust was founded in 1913 to address the changing needs of the people of the United Kingdom and Ireland. It is one of the oldest and most respected charitable trusts in the British Isles. The trust deed sets out Andrew Carnegie’s purpose in establishing the Trust as being:

the improvement of the well-being of the masses of the people of Great Britain and Ireland by such means as are embraced within the meaning of the word ‘charitable’ and which the Trustees may from time to time select as best fitted from age to age for securing these purposes, remembering that new needs are constantly arising as the masses advance.

The endowment of the Trust provided income of £100,000 to be spent every year from 1913. At that time this was a very significant amount of money, causing one commentator to observe that ‘how they spent this money was a matter of national importance’.

The Trustees had to fulfil promises already made by Andrew Carnegie himself or by the Carnegie Corporation of New York. These commitments were mainly for public libraries or church organs. While the Trust continued to spend significant sums on the public library service, they also started to explore what else they could do within the broad remit given them by the Trust deed.

This led to many debates about where the Trust should invest its efforts, but the breadth of the trust deed allowed the Trust a wide canvas on which to pursue its aims. The history of the Trust reflects the broad sweep of events in the 20th and early 21st century: the early concerns with physical welfare giving way increasingly to concerns about social welfare; the impact on society of two wars, and periods of profound economic depression; changing attitudes to immigration and disability; changes in the role and status of women and young people; and changes in the cultural environment. And behind this, enduring concerns about the needs of rural communities, the importance of education in the broadest sense, and the importance of promoting the wellbeing of individuals and communities.

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