Voluntary and Charitable Sectors

Lord Shutt of Greetland Excerpts

Thursday 26th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Shutt of Greetland (LD)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lady Scott of Needham Market on securing this debate on such a wide-ranging subject, which offers many opportunities. I declare an interest as a trustee of two charitable organisations: Pennine Heritage and X-PERT Health.

However, I want to talk about a specific charitable endeavour that supports the voluntary sector, and that is the community foundation movement. What is a community foundation? In my view, it is an all-purpose charity, growing by endowment and spending its income but retaining its asset base, unless its income is enhanced by flow-through money that has been given specifically to that organisation to spend.

Let me share with noble Lords my experience. A mere 32 years ago, I served as mayor of Calderdale, based in Halifax and the Calder Valley towns, from 1982-83 onwards. I decided to start an all-purpose fund for my mayoral charity, but I did not do too well at it; with 600 other engagements as mayor it was difficult to get going. On standing down the first time as a councillor in 1990, I decided to do the job properly. Particularly during that period as mayor, I had seen the need for an independent source of money to support the voluntary sector in that community. In 1990, I felt that the important thing was to get a very sound trust board together and I put a lot of effort into getting a sound board in which people could have confidence. We managed to launch that in 1992. It was a huge task. I was able to pass that job on in 1999 and I am now a life vice-president. Happily, it is proceeding competently under different hands. I am delighted to say that, from nothing, there are now resources—endowed funds—of about £8 million and a grant spend of £800,000 a year. That is higher than one would expect because of flow-through moneys.

I did not know it at the time, but the first community foundation in the United Kingdom was founded in Swindon in 1975. By the time I was getting involved in launching in Calderdale, in the 1990-92 period, there were perhaps 10 or a dozen community foundations. Now there are 49, covering much of the UK. Those 49 now have an asset base of £350 million and the latest figures show that between them they have annual grant making of £50 million a year. It is interesting that now in 2014 we are celebrating the centenary of the movement, which was started in America in 1914 in Cleveland, Ohio. There are now 1,700 community foundations worldwide.

What, then, are the important features of a community foundation? Clearly, one is the specific geographical area. The foundations are dependent on donors. Of course donors can and do give for general purposes in their community, or they can highlight specific areas of work, such as the elimination of poverty, sport-related work or work on the environment. They may even have ideas of a restricted locality within their community or age restrictions. Indeed, donors may put on a temporary restriction in their lifetime and leave it to the trustees to decide how the income of their gift is dealt with when they are dead and buried.

A community foundation has the opportunity and ability to subsume other charities where trustees have had enough, got fed up or do not find that there is a cause anymore; they are able to hand over their money to that community foundation. Over the years, a community foundation gains expertise in grant making in that specific community.

Incidentally, I have been amazed at how many letters and sheets I have had suggesting what I might say for this take note debate. I am responding to one of those now. There are people who find administration, investment and regulation a difficulty. The community foundation can cover that, so if someone has some money but does not want all that administration investment regulation, they should hand it over to a community foundation, which can look after it. As I indicated earlier, a community foundation can act as a wonderful agent for flow-through moneys, whether that is through national government, regional bodies or whatever.

In my view, community foundations give a great opportunity for localism, community leadership and enhancing community life. I commend them and their enhancement.