2025 Quality Accreditation

Since 2007, UKCF has provided a unique Quality Accreditation programme to help define the core standards that guide the unique work of community foundations, ensuring consistency and credibility across the UK network.

UKCF is the only community foundation network in the world that provides this accreditation process, tailored to and designed by community foundations.  With all UKCF members required to pass Quality Accreditation every three years, the programme allows UKCF and its members to confidently present a fully accredited network to all stakeholders.

Currently in its sixth round, UKCF’s Quality Accreditation (QA6) is well under way, and fifteen community foundations have now been awarded accreditation in the first batch of submissions.

How we’ve designed QA6:

Following QA5 in 2021, we gathered feedback from community foundations on the process. 

The main feedback points were:

Point 1:

There should be a differentiation between standards that are a simple tick box, and standards that are possible to improve and grow upon.

Our response: We separated QA6 into two elements. The first, ‘Compliance’, is a simple document submission process, with the committee reviewing documents for sufficiency, but not scoring them. The second, ‘Development’, is a more reflective, ambitious, and self-reflective process that enables community foundations to share their goals and development areas for the future.

Point 2:

The external assessors did not have a strong understanding of the ways in which community foundations work, so their development points were at times not so useful in practice.

Our response: We moved away from external assessors, instead having a QA6 Committee comprising staff and trustees from UKCF’s network to design and deliver the programme.

Point 3:

Often, development points provided did not align with an individual community foundation’s own strategy, plans and ambitions.

Our response: The Development element of QA6 is a self-reflective process driven by the community foundations themselves, allowing them to align their ambitions to their strategies, reflective of the needs in different communities. This process will then be used to inform UKCF’s broader learning plans.

Point 4:

The capacity required to complete the QA process put an undue burden on staff, especially for those community foundations with smaller teams.

Our response: We streamlined the Compliance element into one document submission reflecting community foundation practice. The Development element allows community foundations to engage at the level that reflects team capacity.

Point 5:

The scoring element could be disheartening for teams, especially when there were no clear instructions for how to achieve a higher score.

Our response: The scoring element has been removed and replaced with a more inclusive review process, and more complex areas will be reviewed in the Development element.

Why does this matter?

Quality Accreditation is important for our members for several reasons.

Firstly, this year’s Quality Accreditation (QA6) provides our strategic partners with confidence to know that all accredited community foundations meet a high standard of practice.  Driven by the QA6 Committee and member feedback, we are proud that QA6 has had full engagement from our network and is being successfully completed by all members.

Next, community foundations can use their accreditation to assure philanthropists, corporate partners, statutory funders and other stakeholders that they meet a rigorous set of standards at a local and regional level.

Finally, QA6 supports the community foundation movement to drive practice forward, together.  With challenges emerging in our neighbourhoods and around the globe, from climate change to financial crises, community foundations are providing crucial channels of local support.  And as the VCSE sector evolves, community foundations must continue to play an integral role connecting communities, anticipating and adapting to changes and developments, ensuring that local giving is impactful in the places it is needed.

What’s next?

We will use the results of QA6 to inform UKCF’s broader learning.  These will be in line with our strategic goals, helping community foundations to further develop and adapt for the long term.