All donations and legacies are channelled through the Monmouth Schools’ Charitable Trust which was established in 2013 as a vehicle separate from the William Jones’s Schools Foundation (the endowment). The Trust was formed to support fundraising at both schools and to help establish a culture of philanthropic giving through donations and legacies.

Under the Monmouth Schools’ Charitable Trust, a William Jones Fund for the benefit of Monmouth School for Girls and a separate William Jones Fund for the benefit of Monmouth School for Boys have been created.

Trustees are predominantly former pupils with a vested interest in the success of fundraising. Most have directly benefited from the generosity of William Jones. We are grateful to those who give up their time to serve as trustees.

In the past, a Monmouth School education for girls of ability, from low-income families, was a given. Generations of girls, whether their parents could afford full fees or none, have been educated to the highest standard and gone on to play their part locally and nationally in business, academia, the arts, politics and sport. The Direct Grant system and latterly the Government Assisted Places Scheme (which ended in 1997) made Monmouth accessible for more families at different times in our history.

Over the past few years, the school has reassessed its priorities and focused on much-needed repair and renewal work around teaching and boarding and is currently building a fantastic Performing Arts Centre. This work has inevitably depleted reserves and reduced the amount available to the school from the endowment. The focus now for fundraising is very firmly on the longer term aim to build a new William Jones (Bursary and Scholarship) Fund solely to provide ‘the gift of education’ to as many girls of ability from the local area as possible. The new fund will help with fees for girls who show potential not just academically but also in music or sport.

We believe that a well-rounded education, which encourages children to become independent thinkers and leaders, is a life-changing gift. We believe that every child who is talented, willing to work hard and contribute to the ethos of the school should have access to the first-class education Monmouth provides, regardless of their personal financial circumstance. Please support Monmouth today.

David Hitchcock OBE
Chairman, Monmouth Schools’ Charitable Trust

“Winning a Jones scholarship to Monmouth School for Girls when I was 11 years old (and my family lived in a caravan) changed my life and my opportunities completely. I will never know what my path in life would have been if I had not gone to Monmouth, but I am fairly certain that I may not even have gone to university (no-one in my family had gone before me) and by inference am unlikely to have had careers in so many different areas of life – social work, education, politics, the voluntary sector. Without that scholarship my life would have been much less rich and rewarding, and I suspect I would have given much less back to society.”

Jackie Ballard
Monmouth School for Girls (1964 – 1971)