The trust has no formal partnership agreements; we are too small to be useful as a partner in the way larger charities are. What we do have is four village organisations we work alongside on most weeks, and whose work shapes ours.
None of the organisations below are funders of the trust. All four are sometimes recipients of grants under Grantiau Cymunedol, and all four refer villagers to us under Llaw i’r Aelwyd. We mention them by name because the village mentions them by name; pretending the trust is independent of the rest of the village’s civic life would be untrue.
Welsh-medium primary · founded 1881
Ysgol Gwaun Gynfi.
The village primary school, Welsh-medium, with roughly seventy pupils across the seven year groups. We have a long-standing relationship — about half of our Lle i Ddysgu bursaries are referred through the school, and the school refers families to Llaw i’r Aelwyd two or three times a year. Headteacher Bethan Roberts is our usual point of contact.
What we do together: set-text books for the Eisteddfod, coach fares for school trips, the annual Carol Service tableau, the occasional emergency uniform replacement. What we do not do: the trust does not fund anything that should come from Cyngor Gwynedd’s schools budget, and Bethan will tell us so if she thinks we are about to.
Parish church · Anglican · founded 1857
Eglwys Sant Deiniol.
The parish church of Deiniolen, named for the village’s patron saint. The Rev. Dafydd Hughes has been priest-in-charge since 2019. We work most closely with the church through Galar a Gwellhad — chapel flowers, contributions toward wakes, the occasional taxi to a hospital chaplaincy — and through the annual collection at the Carol Service, which we hold at Capel Bethel but is supported by the church as well.
What we do together: small contributions to the social work of the church, the Carol Service, the wider chapel and church community in Deiniolen. What we do not do: we do not fund religious worship in itself, only the social activities that the church organises around it (the lunch club, the visiting rota, the bereavement support).
Football club · founded 1959
Clwb Pêl-droed Deiniolen.
The village football team — currently in the Welsh North Wales Coast East League — has played continuously since 1959. The club is run by volunteers (chair: Rhys Llwyd; secretary: Sara Watkin) and is the largest single recipient of our Grantiau Cymunedol budget across the years. The 2025 defibrillator-service-and-corner-flags grant was £450 in total, made in two tranches.
What we do together: small contributions toward kit, equipment, ground maintenance and (occasionally) club-house decoration. What we do not do: we have never funded match fees, travel for fixtures, or anything that the club’s subscription income should cover. The club has, sensibly, never asked.
History society · founded 2004
Cymdeithas Hanes Deiniolen.
The village history society, founded in 2004 by the late Gwilym Llwyd and chaired since 2018 by Bryn Davies. The society holds the village’s growing oral-history archive, including the recordings made at Ifor’s quarry afternoon in 2025. We work with the society on Grantiau Cymunedol applications, on the printing of occasional village pamphlets, and on the cataloguing of the oral-history archive.
What we do together: printing, archive storage, occasional heritage walks, oral-history project costs. What we do not do: we do not fund academic publication or anything that the National Slate Museum is better placed to support.
A short word on what we are not.
We are not a funder of any of the four organisations above in any structural sense. The total of our 2025 grants to them — roughly £730 of our £3,104 — is a small contribution to their collective annual turnover. The trust is a junior partner in the village’s civic life; we know it, and so do they.
Get in touch as an organisation.
If you are a village organisation — a constituted group, a small society, a chapel committee, a parents’ council — and would like to discuss a possible Grantiau Cymunedol application, write to [email protected] or fill in the short form below. We will reply within seven working days.
Inside each partner.
Four images of each of the four partner organisations on a working day, taken across 2025. None of them are posed; all are documentary, all are with permission.
Ysgol Gwaun Gynfi
Home-time at the school gates.
About seventy children across seven year groups. We work most closely with Years 5–6 (school-trip coach fares) and Year 1 (the cylch meithrin onward route).
Eglwys Sant Deiniol
Sunday morning at the chapel.
The post-service refreshments at Capel Bethel are a long-standing focal point for Llaw i’r Aelwyd referrals — the chapel rota tells us who needs a visit, and we follow up by post.
Clwb Pêl-droed
The clubhouse on a Tuesday training night.
The new defibrillator cabinet (mint-painted, with a small Trust plaque) is mounted to the left of the door. We funded the cabinet and the two-year service in April 2025.
Cymdeithas Hanes
The history society meets monthly.
The slate-grey archive box on the table holds the oral-history recordings we co-funded with Ifor’s walk; the society is digitising them in early 2026.
A short note on a meeting at a doorway.
Most of our partnership work happens not at meetings but at doorways. The image below is from the October 2025 handover at the door of Ysgol Gwaun Gynfi — the headteacher and one of the trustees agreeing the autumn term’s school-trip coach-fare arrangements over a buff folder. There were no minutes; there was a handshake, a folder, and a short walk back through the playground in the evening light. We are unembarrassed about this.
The autumn-term handover, October 2025. Folder: DEINIOLEN TRUST FUND · Bwrsariaethau 2026.
What we have learned about partnership.
Three short things, written down because they have taken us forty-six years to learn. First: a partnership at the scale of a village is, mostly, a habit, not an agreement. We have no signed memoranda with any of the four partners above; we have, however, met them all in person at least four times a year for as long as the Scheme has existed. Second: the smallest partner is not always the smallest beneficiary; the history society’s £180 pamphlet print-run has, on the ground, done more for village identity than larger projects we have part-funded. Third: a refusal of partnership is sometimes the kindest contribution — we have, twice in the last decade, declined to be listed as a funder of projects we did not want to be associated with, and both times the partner organisations have thanked us, quietly, afterwards.
