Shiplake College plays an active part of the local community in a number of ways, working with primary and secondary schools, offering its facilities to clubs and groups and by raising funds for other charities.
Charities
Every year, each House selects a charity to support, while the prefects choose a cause for their Prefect Fundraising Day. As a College, we also support other charities such as Gap Africa and CIRDIC through annual or biennial fundraising initiatives. The Parents' Association also play a key role in fundraising, and we support regular giving schemes, such as donations to Oddballs Foundation through bobble hat sales.
The College has been associated with the charity Gap Africa since it was established following a Shiplake College Expedition Society trip to Kenya in 1994. Every other year there is a whole school sponsored walk, for which Gap Africa is the sole or main beneficiary. This allows each Houses to sponsor a child in Kenya for him or her to attend secondary school, which is not free in Kenya.
Each year the College will raise around on average £10k for the various charities, thanks to pupils, parents and members of the Shiplake community. More information about our chosen charities is available from Shiplake CONNECTED at the link below.
Public Benefit
The Charities Act 2011 defines a charity as an institution which is established for a charitable purpose and provides benefit to the public. Educational charities, like Shiplake College and many other independent schools, must demonstrate that we are also operating for the public benefit. The College illustrates how it does this in the ISC Annual Census and it also completed the Economic Impact Tool, created by HMC in 2018, which illustrated that Shiplake was saving the Exchequer £5,434,000 per year at that time.