Supporting stronger foundations in turbulent times

Our outgoing head of policy and practice, Max Rutherford, reflects on changes to the foundation sector during a convergence of historic events and crises since 2018, and the way that ACF’s Stronger Foundations initiative has offered a compass towards ambitious and effective practice.

Since 2018, when I joined ACF, there has been a convergence of historic global events and crises, each of which has and is impacting dramatically on the people and communities that foundations exist to serve – including Brexit, Covid-19, the Black Lives Matter movement, the acceleration of the climate emergency, and a new European war. 

The foundation sector’s resources have never been more needed or more competed for. There are a greater number of applications and, consequently, a larger proportion of these are unsuccessful. Partly because of the rising demand, scrutiny of foundation practice is intensifying and becoming more critical, with growing expectation for accountability and transparency. Answers are being demanded to challenging questions, both from within and beyond the philanthropy community, for example about the origins of a foundation’s wealth, its investments, and its board and staff diversity. 

At a time of extreme pressure on public finances, foundation money is highly valued – increasing its potential influence and broadening the range of opportunities to leverage change. And yet despite record levels of grant-making by the foundation sector, high inflation means that this money is literally worth less than it was a year ago. 

We’ve seen during this time a flourishing of activism from within the foundation sector – including Future Foundations UK, the Grant Givers Movement, the Funders for Race Equality Alliance, the Foundation Practice Rating project, and Grant Advisor. 

Alongside these important initiatives has been ACF’s Stronger Foundations initiative, which began in 2017 with the aim to identify and promote ambitious practice. To achieve this goal would require buy-in from across ACF’s membership and beyond, a collective of charitable foundations that is kaleidoscopic in its areas of interest, structures, origins, histories, resources, and geographies. Six working groups were established during 2018 with a thematic focus related to foundation practice – including strategy, impact, funding, transparency, diversity and investment. Each comprised of up to 15 member representatives and, over the course of two years, each group met seven times on topics related to their theme. Some of these took place in the ACF offices with external speakers, while others went on the road to locations that would inspire conversation. 

We heard from some amazing and provocative speakers whose work has led to systemic change. These included Equileap’s efforts to name, shame (and praise) major corporations for their gender pay gaps; People and Planets’ campaign to influence university endowments to divest from fossil fuels; Brad Smith’s, CEO of Candid in the US, hypothesis of why Trump’s supreme court appointments were an example of successful long-term family foundation grant-making; Just for Kids Law’s testimony on how support from foundations led to successful strategic litigation; Facebook’s approach to customer service and agile product design; and The Parliamentary Office for Science and Technology’s articulation of the value of horizon scanning – to name just a few. 

In total, 42 working group meetings were held (you can read a summary of every meeting in part two of the Stronger Foundations thematic reports). It was an incredible and unprecedented evidence-gathering process – still the largest exercise of its kind in the foundation sector globally to date. It was also an immersive experience for the ACF team – deepening our understanding of both our membership and the wider context in which foundations operate in the UK and beyond. It generated an enormous amount of material, which we used to draft a thematic report based on each working group’s conclusions. 

In addition, with the support from chairs of ACF members who we consulted in 2019 (one of whom urged us not to “bland it out” when it came to the recommendations), ACF created a set of ‘pillars of practice’ for each thematic area. In total, 40 pillars were created and launched in stages by the summer of 2020. While the pandemic was by then dominating foundation attention, the pillars resonated well with members and others. Indeed, the pandemic strengthened our collective belief that it was more important than ever that foundations were as ambitious and effective with all their resources. Later, bespoke reports for chairs and smaller foundations helped engage key audiences, as well as a cross-cutting themes report that examined issues of power, accountability and connection.

Stronger Foundations also gave ACF a more robust evidence base to influence the operating environment – material gathered from the working groups shaped our position in relation to government consultations, select committee enquiries and calls for views from the charity regulators. In 2021 it emboldened our call for the Charity Commission for England and Wales to be more proactive in encouraging charities to invest in ways that more intentionally align to their missions rather than only to generate returns. Stronger Foundations also led to the Liaison Select Committee recommending in 2019 that all parliamentary committees engage with ACF and the foundation sector’s expertise in future inquiries. 

At the end of 2020, ACF launched the Stronger Foundations self-assessment tool – a quick and easy way for ACF members to judge their own practice against each of the pillars and describe their plans for future progress. To date, more than 100 foundations have used the tool and submitted their results. Others have adapted the tool in their own ways, using it as the basis for their own KPIs, strategic reviews and policies. 

The data gathered through the tool enabled ACF to share publicly where foundations feel they are at a more advanced stage (funding practices, strategy, engagement) and where they have further to travel (diversity, investment, impact). Given it was based on members’ own views, ACF has been able to speak more confidently about where foundations need to enhance their practices, and to be more responsive to need in the learning programme we’ve offered. For example, launching a new diversity, equity and inclusion learning series in 2021, which, over four sessions, was attended by more than 200 ACF member representatives. 

I’m also proud that Stronger Foundations has been influential beyond the UK, with similar initiatives being launched in other countries the last two years including Italy, Spain, Denmark, and Australia, as well as a Stronger Foundations peer support group for foundation associations in Europe. 

Stronger Foundations is more of a compass than a map. It offers foundations across the UK and beyond a framework for having difficult conversations, developing new ideas, and taking meaningful action. It has also strengthened the sector’s own foundations as it responds to the justified critique that will amplify in the years to come. I am pleased that Stronger Foundations will remain a core part of ACF’s work when its new strategy launches later this year. And I’m delighted that in many ways the concept of ‘Stronger Foundations’ has become mainstreamed, with an established consensus that all foundations should ask tough questions of themselves, be open to scrutiny and change, and continually seek to be more ambitious and effective with all their resources.