The future of community philanthropy: More than pantomines and football shirts

There is an insatiable appetite for community philanthropy. There are over 18,000 donors in the UK giving through community foundations who collectively awarded £140m last year, which makes community foundations the sleeping giant of philanthropy. Around the world there are reported to be 1,175 community foundations in 46 countries.

Community philanthropy is the obvious starting place in philanthropy. Most donors have a commitment to ‘put something back’ into the area that their wealth was created. J Barbour and Sons, for example, originally made weatherproof clothing for the fishing industry on the Tyne, and The Barbour Trust still predominately supports North East causes. It is easier in regions that have a strong identity, like the North East, and more difficult in major capital cities like London, but the imperative ‘to look after one’s own’ is nevertheless still strong.

A key challenge for community philanthropy is how to move beyond the community pantomime and football strips for young people in poor areas, which can see considerable sums of money dissipated in small grants. Such grants are all valuable in their own right. The Local Network Fund, for example, which most community foundations have administered for the Department of Children, Schools and Families, has made a substantial impact in raising children’s aspirations and tackling child poverty with a maximum award of £7,000. But all these good works need to be put into a policy context.

The recent Treasury review of the third sector(1) emphasised the importance of building strong communities and the role of community groups in doing so. Indeed, the provisions included a scheme for local endowments building on the models developed by community foundations. There is a welcome move in government thinking towards devolution to small scale communities, which acknowledges that people need a sense of pride and belonging and that management is often best carried out at street level. Community philanthropy can play a concerted role in developing community hubs, enabling assets transfers and training parish councils. In Newcastle, we support one of the few urban parish councils on an outer city council estate.

In an increasingly multi-racial society, communities face new challenges in areas as diverse as Leeds and Lincolnshire. The excellent Commission on Integration and Cohesion report(2) is packed with practical ways in which communities can work better together and include people from different races, faiths and backgrounds. As Darra Singh writes in his introduction, a strong theme is that ‘place matters’: that solutions cannot be nationally prescribed but rather must be bespoke at a local level. The insights and experiences that community philanthropists bring can be invaluable to finding local solutions, and many are also willing to give time and business brains to local problems.

Both these reports show the influence of Robert Putnam’s work on social capital – the notion that communities that eat together, play together and trust each other are healthier, cleverer and wealthier. Putnam has drawn attention to the decline in social capital in the United States and is now researching the particular issues facing multi-racial communities in overcoming their natural tendency to retreat into their ethnic groups(3). I am fascinated by the way some communities in unlikely places appear rich in social capital – the Allendale Valley in Northumberland or the Cowpen estate in Blyth, for example – and whether social capital can provide a framework for developing and measuring the effect of community philanthropy.

Community philanthropy shouldn’t shirk from funding policy work either. For example, the Community Foundation (for Tyne & Wear and Northumberland) played a leading role in the Invest 2006 campaign against funding cuts; Millfield House Foundation has helped the think tank ippr set up a northern regional office, and Northern Rock Foundation is about to commission ‘state of the sector’ surveys in the North East. As my distinguished American colleague Emmett Carson continually reminds me, a community foundation can only achieve its full potential if it is prepared to take a stand on important social issues.

So another important challenge for community philanthropy is to help donors put their giving into this wider context and develop the breadth and audacity of their philanthropy. We can catch them early – an Acorn Fund at our Community Foundation is no more than a meal out a month – and develop a lifelong relationship with people who have the potential to become powerful philanthropists. Some will broaden their interests and others will deepen them within the community, and we should encourage them in both directions.

And what of the future? In a recent sabbatical, I’ve been looking at whether the directions for community philanthropy predicted in the United States apply here as well(4). We too will benefit from a baby boomer generation with the ability to become active citizens and philanthropists. We will also be caught up in a maelstrom of mobility around the world which will stretch donors’ allegiances but may well make them even more needy of their roots.

Community foundations will need to use the internet to communicate like never before and anticipate more competition in philanthropic advisory services. Yet their great strength will be their unrivalled knowledge of the ‘back streets of Halifax’ and their ability to match donors’ interests with great grant opportunities.

Still, we – and all local funders – will also need to be aware that the world is a shrinking place, a series of interdependent communities facing common issues of population growth, global warming and fanaticism, and encourage our donors to look outward as well as inward in facing the 21st century.

1. HM Treasury, The Future Role of the Third Sector in Social and Economic Regeneration
2. Commission on Integration and Cohesion, A Shared Future
3. R. Putnam, Diversity and Community in 21st Century
4. Lucy Bernholz, Katherine Fulton and Gabriel Kasper, ‘On the Brink of New Promise: The Future of Community Foundations’, Blueprint Research and Hepburn G. ‘Gazing Wildly’

George Hepburn OBE was appointed Chief Executive of the Community Foundation when it was established in 1988. He is a past Board member and Chair of Community Foundation Network. He was a member of Transatlantic Community Foundation Network for six years. He chairs Millfield House Foundation, which supports social policy initiatives in the North East, and is a passionate believer in building civil society at a local level.