Manifesto for Community Philanthropy

At a time when there is broad acceptance that the public sector is set for a period of austerity, our UK umbrella organisation, Community Foundation Network, has produced a Manifesto setting out recommendations aimed at empowering local people to fund and deliver change within their own communities.

The Manifesto is targeted at politicians and policy makers to consider the recommendations as a route to levering additional private funding to support local charitable activities and community regeneration. Essex Community Foundation believes that the recommendations would have a positive impact on local communities in Essex and would :

 

• Empower local communities to effect real change with funding resources and skills, supporting the political move towards localism
• Create special giving zones to incentivise giving to target certain issues or deprived areas.
• Create incentives for giving by promoting match funding programmes
• Remove, or simplify, a range of bureaucratic obligations placed on voluntary organisations
• Embed a culture of giving by promoting philanthropy through schools

Click here to view the manifesto .....

 

Essex Community Foundation firmly believes that strong, healthy communities, underpinned by voluntary action, can change the quality of people’s lives. Communities are the sum of the people within them and personal relationships build social capital. This is why grassroots community philanthropy is so important and why we believe more needs to be done to encourage charitable giving at a local level. At this time, 85% of all charitable income in the UK goes to 5% of charities, and these are the largest national and international bodies. The voluntary and community groups that we support in Essex are not the recipients of this income, so support for their charitable work needs to be encouraged among local people and businesses.