£2.5bn needed to sustain community foundations

Finance | 24 Jan 2008

Community foundations will need to increase their endowments by £2.5bn over the next 20 years if they are to be sustainable, according to a new report on the future of philanthropy. There are currently 56 community foundations across the UK, which have endowments worth £141m. However, in the report, Gazing Idly by George Hepburn, chief executive of the Tyne and Wear and Northumberland Community Foundation, recommended that the value of foundations needed to increase dramatically if they are to continue to make an impact within society. Last year community foundations made over £70m worth of grants to local community-based projects.

Hepburn said an increase of £50m at today’s prices per community foundation was needed over the next 20 years. “There may be a scaled down, low staff alternative but any self-respecting community foundation serving a substantial community should aim for this level. This will require a much faster rate of growth than is achieved currently, where only a few community foundations receive new gifts of more than £500,000 a year.”

The National Association for Voluntary and Community Voluntary Action (NAVCA) said that while the figures sounded “ambitious”, they were not unrealistic. “Unless we are ambitious, community foundations are not going to achieve the sort of scale they have already achieved in Tyne and Wear,” said Kevin Curley, NAVCA’s chief executive.

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