Developing a better understanding of community foundations in the UK’s localisms

Abstract

Recent policy emphases in the United Kingdom (UK) show growing attention to localism interconnected with philanthropy. This appears to offer significant opportunities for community foundations – geographically embedded multi-purpose charities envisaged as combining various grant-making roles with community leadership. Using a theoretical framework derived from political geography, we explore and conceptualise how community foundations conceive and operationalise their community leadership role across the UK’s localism discourses; we find their strategies and approaches to be differentiated rather than shared. This challenges the understanding of ‘community foundations’ as a single model in its UK expression and questions their envisaged potential as collective pan-UK lead-players within localism policy.