Our Quality Accreditation is now complete

Over the past year community foundations have undergone an internal audit of their policies and procedures, compiled a submission of documents for external review and participated in interviews with their independent assessor.

The assessment, which was carried out by Ideas to Impact, evaluated the ongoing practices and development trajectory of each community foundation within core standards of governance, finance, philanthropy, grant making, community participation and organisational development. The programme is unique to UKCF, providing the only accreditation process internationally that is tailored to and designed by community foundations.  

The UKCF Quality Accreditation Programme is an initiative designed to provide due diligence that confirms members have the capacity to deliver grants and programmes on a national level, and will last for three years until October 2024. It promotes excellent practice across community foundations to ensure that they can utilise their resources most effectively to listen to, support and advocate for their communities.

The Quality Accreditation assessment has revealed that: 

• The value of grant making in the UKCF network more than doubled during the Covid-19 Pandemic 

• Total community foundation endowment across the membership has grown by 30% since QA4 in 2017 

• The highest average score QA5 was in the core standard of effective emergency response, reflecting the exceptional skill community foundations displayed in rapidly activating local philanthropy and delivering funding to support community-led responses to crisis

“Being now in the fifth round of Quality Accreditation, we have seen community foundations throughout the UK raise their game and clearly demonstrate a high standard of governance, administration and financial diligence through external assessment across all ranges of team size and capacity”

John Gordon, Chair of the QA Committee 

“It is a mark of the commitment and diligence of our members that they have completed this rigorous accreditation process at the same time as distributing record-breaking levels of funding to their communities. The UKCF team is proud to support a network which reaches every part of the UK and whose good practice has been so clearly demonstrated throughout this process.”

Rosemary Macdonald, CEO of UKCF 

“The team of assessors has been impressed by the creativity and tenacity of community foundations and their nuanced understanding of the needs of their communities and the commitment to their local areas.  This understanding and the ongoing relationships that foundations are able to build means that there is a reach into local communities that helps individual and organisations from all sectors to work together in the places that it’s really needed.”

Becky Nixon, Director of Ideas to Impact 

If you would like to find out more about how working with community foundations can amplify social impact, please contact Jon Everett.