Our funding partnerships

Why partner through UKCF?

Place-based funding specialists

Community foundations are the UK's place-based funding specialists, with relationships across the full breadth of the voluntary sector and particular depth at the grassroots, community-led and volunteer-led end.

Embedded in their communities and trusted by them, community foundations know their local patch and how to resource it well, through flexible, proportionate grants, facilitation, convening and other support.

Local delivery. National insight

A partnership with UKCF gives you both a place-based approach and the benefit of national insight drawn from that delivery.  We surface what's working across places, what's emerging in different communities and what cuts across the network.  That insight can feed directly into your work, future design, and sector learning, as well as our policy work with Government and the wider funding community.

Built for systems change and collaboration

Community foundations work across the public, private and VCSE sectors as a matter of routine: funding grassroots groups, partnering with local authorities, police and crime commissioners, integrated care boards, and convening corporate and individual donors.  They map the system, and understand where there are opportunities for change, with relationships and intelligence that take years to build. 

Because community foundations are endowed and built to last, they can hold the long-term presence systems change requires, staying with a place after a particular initiative ends.

We specialise in co-designed, trust-based, flexible funding.  Every partnership is shaped collaboratively between the partners and the community foundations who will deliver.  That means partnerships benefit from the network's local knowledge, relationships and experience from the design stage onwards.  Where it's called for, we can also build in participation by affected communities at any stage, from design to local review panels through to full co-governance.

Our team brings personal experience of designing and running collaboratives at scale across the UK funding sector, including cross-sector convenings that bring together funders, government, housing, health and other stakeholders around a shared theme.

A delivery model that stands up to scrutiny

All community foundations are accredited on a rolling basis by UKCF, which means that all operate to a shared minimum standard on policies, assessment, safeguarding, risk, due diligence, decision making, monitoring, impact measurement and learning.

Our approach to equity and climate

UKCF is a movement-building organisation working for a more just future.  Equity, diversity and inclusion are central to how we design, deliver and govern our national partnerships, embedded from co-design through to funding decisions so that resources reach the communities most affected by inequity. 

Strengthening the network's focus on climate and environmental stewardship is also a core priority.  We approach this as one issue, recognising how environmental and social justice are bound up together, impacting the communities least responsible for them.

How we work with partners

No two partnerships are the same, but below are some common ways partners work with us.  We will shape any combination to your objectives, timescales and appetite.  If you have something in mind that you don't see described here, get in touch.  We can almost always find a way.

Consultation, insight and connection 

Place-based intelligence, data and analysis on a specific theme or geography, or a direct introduction to the right community foundations for a focused piece of work.  UKCF holds patch-level mapping of the UK landscape, covering deprivation and need, so we can scope partnerships against real geography.

End-to-end fund design and delivery

You bring a strategic focus, a fund idea or a broad theme.  We work with you to design, launch and run an initiative that meets your objectives at a pace and shape that works for the community foundations delivering it and the communities they serve.  Design can include research and evidence, theory of change, learning frameworks, facilitation, youth or community voice and communications.

Collaborative and pooled funds 

UKCF supports funder collaboratives, from convening a group of funders for the first time through to joining an existing collaborative as a delivery partner for grant making.  We can lead on governance, facilitation and sense making, or come in alongside others.  Our team brings personal experience of designing and running collaboratives at scale across the UK funding sector.

Emergency and time-limited response

When the brief and budget are clear, our distributed model moves fast. Local charities and groups are often first on the scene in an emergency and know their communities best.  That's why the National Emergencies Trust aims to fund local first, working with UKCF and our network of 47 community foundations wherever possible.

From the Coronavirus Appeal (where community foundations distributed over £76 million) to flooding and other crises, we've connected national response funding with grassroots organisations within days.

Fund administration only

If you have already designed an initiative and simply want national, place-based delivery without lots of contracts, we can act as your single intermediary, coordinating delivery, reporting and due diligence across the network.