INCREASING THE FLOW OF CAPITAL FOR GOOD - INVESTING AND GIVING
Matthew Bowcock, a self-confessed ‘reconstructed’ serial entrepreneur who founded, built and sold technology and genetics companies in Australia, the US and the UK is today an ardent and active community philanthropist. He believes passionately that “philanthropy is a privilege”.
As chairman of the Community Foundation Network (CFN) and co-founder of Surrey-focused Hazelhurst Trust with wife Dr Helen Bowcock, he spends the majority of his time working to extend that privilege to people of all giving abilities.
In his CFN role he is, he says, “cheerleading a movement” – a statement that is more controversial than it at first sounds. The word “movement” represents a fundamental change in the nature of the Community Foundation Network, that comprises 56 community foundations, with a footprint that extends to 95% of the UK.
Historically, it has been a group of quite different sized and ‘shaped’ organisations that provide a dynamic connection between philanthropists and local causes and charities.
The challenge for the past five years has been to introduce consistency and quality across the network and that job is “now 80% done” says Bowcock.
The saying ‘you have seen one foundation, you have seen one foundation,’ is one that Bowcock says has been largely dispelled.
A man given to analogy, he explains the fundamental change he is helping bring about. “We used to be like a group of people milling in the street, whereas now we are more and more like a demonstration or a march, all chanting the same thing.”
The chant and direction is: ‘locally-managed philanthropy’.
It’s a subtle but important difference from the term ‘local philanthropy’ for which community foundations are known. Bowcock’s strategy is to create a bigger philanthropy pie by offering donors access to the full spectrum of philanthropy opportunities in a local setting. In growing donor-centric philanthropy he says it will naturally follow that community-focussed philanthropy will grow too.
“If a donor asks for something and it is possible, then I want foundations to say ‘yes’. The answer must not always be ‘create a donor advised fund at the community foundation’, but to listen to what donors really want to achieve and help them to do that.”
The services provided by Community Foundations may in the next few years even include a social investment option. Bowcock is working with other social finance organisations such as Key Fund and Big Issue Invest, to create a social fund with a matched aspect to draw in investment to start up new local social enterprises. It will give donors the scope to use their skills and expertise as well as money to support community or other projects through an investment approach.
Bowcock continues in optimistic vein on the appetite for giving locally. “There is definitely a growing interest,” he says and points to CFN’s recent performance as evidence.
In 2010 its endowment stood at £244.5m, a 48% increase on the previous year’s figure of £151m. And in the last year 649 new funds have been set up, representing a 50% increase on the previous year, and accounting for £37m of new giving. It now supports 23,400 donors, 2,456 of them major donors.
One reason for the growth he says is the emergence of a new profile of philanthropists. The baby boomers who have come of philanthropic age, having prospered under free market Thatcherism and successive governments, and now, says Bowcock, “find themselves comfortably off and wanting to give. They are entrepreneurial and want to be more engaged and in touch with their giving and see its impact for themselves. Local philanthropy lets people be more involved.”
Local environments are also a good setting in which to learn how to give effectively says Bowcock. “Philanthropists are not born. There is a very clear learning process and giving locally is a good place to start.”
Even philanthropic phenomenon Bill Gates recommends starting locally. “You can see what works and understand the intervention points and the effect they can have. You may have a small pot of money and you can learn over time whether you want to make a large difference to a small amount of people, say take a group of disabled people on holiday, or a small difference to a large amount of people – campaigning to give them the right to use disabled loos. Local giving is where you can build skills and achieve the greatest gratification,” says Bowcock.
CFN is working to codify the learning that happens within their own foundations so they can replicate successful and effective programmes and projects with the aim of providing proven off-the-peg solutions where the right conditions exist. Bowcock gives an example of a Norfolk project, Kickstart Mopeds, that overcame the problem a lack of local transport infrastructure was presenting to unemployed people who lived in remote areas of the county and so couldn’t get to job interviews.
The scheme allowed interviewees to borrow scooters for up to a year to get to job and training interviews. If they got the job or were accepted to a training programme they were able to buy the scooter in small instalments. “Something as simple as providing a means of transport solved the issue of unemployment for some people. Our thinking is that the same remote conditions probably exist elsewhere, in counties that are geographically similar and where people face the same issue so perhaps the programme can be rolled out there.”
Bowcock is a firm believer that the solutions to community problems lie within the community. “People have the means to solve their own problems better than outside agencies. They know their communities intimately; they know better the reasons for the issues they face and how to solve them if given the chance. Elected authorities have too much power to judge. People need to take back power.”
Quoting from Cormac Russell’s work on Asset Based Community Development (ABCD) in which local people were asked what percentage of community problems they believed they could solve once they had audited their own applicable skills. The answer was 70%. When the same question was asked of outside agencies the answer was 30%.
Bowcock is a keen advocate of ABCD, a US methodology that draws upon existing community strengths to build stronger, more sustainable communities for the future, which is being adopted in some programmes in the UK. He is keen to see it implemented in the UK by philanthropists through the network. Building on the skills of local residents, the power of local associations, and the supportive functions of local institutions, ABCD is constructed to put power in the hands of citizens to deal with their own problems.
It smacks of ‘Big Society’ thinking, but Bowcock prefers the term ‘engaged society’, though acknowledges a new mood for active participation and more space for this as government funding falls away. “Local philanthropy has been the poor cousin of philanthropy for a long time being largely state-funded. But we are now at a tipping point when the nature of our society fundamentally changes, such as the creation of the welfare state in 1948, or the miner’s strike in 1984,” he says, and offers another analogy before he leaves: “It’s like when you are in a boat at sea and the tide has changed. You can’t necessarily spot the moment when the tide changes but you realise it is going with you rather than against you. I think the climate is now in our favour.”
Community Foundations
Quality accredited Community Foundations offer a philanthropy advice service plus customised grant portfolio development. The benefits to donors are that Community Foundations are a fast and flexible way of helping those with an existing charitable trust or those who do not have a giving vehicle set up for them.
Community Foundations provide advice and learning support, help with identifying effective organisations to fund, handle admin, and work to standards endorsed by The Charity Commission for England and Wales. They also provide networking and donor education opportunities. As well as philanthropy advice, Community Foundations offer fund design, outreach services, handle enquiries, grant applications, carry out due diligence, make grants on behalf of donors, and monitor, evaluate and report on funded projects.
