Northern Ireland trust to close its doors
Howard Lake | 21 June 2018 | News
A Northern Ireland trust which has distributed over £12 million since it was set up ten years ago will wind up at the end of the year.
In 2008 the Building Change Trust was established by the Big Lottery with a grant of £10 million as an investment for community capacity building and promotion of the voluntary and community sector in Northern Ireland. The original grant has grown due to investment gains.
The “life-limited” Trust has supported the community and voluntary sector in Northern Ireland through the development, delivery of, and learning from a range or programmes including commissioned work, awards programmes and other interventions.
Between now and December the resources held by the Trust will be used to support the community and voluntary sector to achieve more and better collaboration, increased sustainability and to be a learning sector which identifies, shares and acts on lessons of others’ actions. This work will be carried out across five areas:
- Collaboration
- Social Finance
- Social Innovation
- Inspiring Impact
- Creating Space for Civic Thinking.
The Trust’s Director of Operations Nigel McKinney told Scope magazine that the board decided to wind up a long time ago and was not seeking ‘to build an empire.’ He said he believed that the trust the organisation had built up would have been eroded if it had decided to continue, and that this would have impaired the collaborative relationships it had built up.
Last week the Trust shared its ‘Agenda for the Future’ report with MPs and other stakeholders at Westminster, asking for their future commitment to the Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprise Sector in Northern Ireland.
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About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.