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Community Foundation Network’s values are based around supporting
community foundations and building best practice in all the programmes
it offers its members.
The Time for Growth, Fair
Share, YouthBank and ICT
Project described
below are examples of programmes that reflect these values as they
facilitate active community involvement, local initiative and partnerships,
as well as equity and accessibility.
TIME FOR GROWTH
Building endowment from many donors to benefit the community is
an ambitious task. Thanks to a £1 million grant from the Esmée
Fairbairn Foundation, CFN has established its Time for Growth programme.
The programme challenges ten community foundations to grow their
endowments by an average of £2 million each, within three years.
The programme offers a grant of up to £100,000 to allow the
ten community foundations sufficient staff time and skills for them
to concentrate on faster endowment building. An independent panel
monitors and advises the programme.
Time for Growth participants are:
They started on their new fund development activity
between October 2001 and January 2002 and by the end of June 2003
between them they
had raised gifts and firm pledges of nearly £8.5 million.
All the foundations have seen the enhanced involvement of trustees
in fund development and know how crucial these volunteer advocates
are in effective endowment building. CFN is using the interest earned
on the grant to offer on-going peer learning, training and support
to the ten foundations.
To share the lessons learned among the whole network, the Gulbenkian
Foundation has provided a grant towards a careful evaluation of the
Time for Growth programme.
For more information on Time for Growth contact Clare
Brooks, Director, Network Development at [email protected]
 FAIR SHARE TRUST PROGRAMME
The £168.75 million Fair Share initiative has three programmes
developed jointly by the New Opportunities Fund and the Community
Fund:
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An investment of £50 million across the UK from the New
Opportunities Fund to be held in the Fair Share Trust by Community
Foundation Network (CFN) |
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An £80 million Community Fund contribution into Fair
Share areas across the UK through both medium and large grant
programmes |
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A £38.75 million New Opportunities Fund contribution
under its Fair Share: Transforming Your Space England programme
to be delivered by local authorities |
The Fair Share initiative represents a new concept in lottery distribution.
It aims to support programmes and projects that have a sustainable
impact on the lives of disadvantaged people in areas identified as
not having received a fair share of lottery money.
Fair Share Trust money will be used to fund projects over a ten-year
period through a network of local grant-makers in the UK.
The Fair Share Trust programme makes funding available to target
neighbourhoods over a longer period of time than more traditional
lottery funding programmes, ten years in England
and Wales, and five in Scotland. It engages local people in decision-making,
helping to empower communities to access further funding from the
lottery
and other sources in the future.
The Fair Share Trust aims to support projects that:
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Are run by and for disadvantaged people |
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Develop the capacity of communities to seek, obtain and manage
funding
for projects that reflect local priorities and needs |
For more information on the Fair Share Trust programme, please contact
Margaret Cooney, Director, Programmes on [email protected].
See also New Opportunities Fund www.nof.org.uk and Community Fund
www.community-fund.org.uk
YOUTHBANK
YouthBanks are groups of young people who get together
for a variety of daunting tasks - starting with getting some
money from which to make grants in their local area. Once they have
received funding they set about identifying needs, planning grant-making
systems, publicising grants rounds and in due course awarding grants
to
other young people who have had a great idea for improving life
in their community. Since starting in 1999 YouthBanks around
the country have given in excess of £250,000 to other young
people’s
projects.
Community Foundation Network (CFN), along with British Youth Council,
Changemakers and National Youth Agency, secured nearly £1 million
from the Community Fund to set up the national office of YouthBank
UK. Of the seven pilot YouthBanks originally launched, four were
associated with community foundations.
For more information on YouthBank, please see http://www.youthbank.org.uk.
ICT PROJECT
Funded by the National Lottery Charities Board in 2000, Community
Foundation Network (CFN) runs an Information and Communications
Technology (ICT) Project.
The objective is to ensure that UK community foundations’ needs
in relation to hardware, software and training in information technology
are fully met in a timely and cost effective manner.
The ICT Project has two primary objectives:
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To help community foundations in the UK develop a robust and
modern IT infrastructure to ensure they can provide the most
effective service possible to their local communities |
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Develop a user driven, professional database (DIGITS)
that will allow community foundations to capture and manipulate
data simply and produce meaningful management information |
Both objectives are being met. The level of IT expertise ‘on
the ground’ is surpassing expectations and the DIGITS database
software is being successfully used throughout the UK network.
 DIGITS
(Donor Intelligence and Grants Information Tracking System) is the
only database system specifically designed for use by community
foundations. It has been heavily subsidised by CFN and
includes a national support network.
The software has been designed on the Microsoft Access platform - one
of the most common database management systems. While many other ‘off
the shelf’ databases available to the voluntary sector serve
only to record donations received or grant payments made, DIGITS
has the ability to track the whole process from donation to grant.
DIGITS version 1.1.0 was released in April 2003. As well as significant
enhancements, including web access and remote working facilities,
it has new features that enable users to create and show a set of
fund-specific monitoring questions.
For more information on the ICT Project and/or the DIGITS database,
contact Les Wilcock, Information and Computer Technology Development
Project Manager, email [email protected].
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