British foundations – locked in a time warp?
Howard Lake | 25 April 2003 | News
“British foundations seem to be locked in a time warp, increasingly lagging
behind modern developments,” said Lord Trevor Smith in the Foreword to a report by the LSE’s Centre for Civil Society published last year.
Lord Smith is one of the speakers at a special conference being held at Charityfair in London this week.
He will be speaking about the findings of the report and how foundations could contribute much more value to society than they do now.
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The conference, entitled ‘New Grantmaking’ will consider just how effective
conventional grant making is in creating social benefit and whether new approaches now appearing will be more effective.
There have been strong recent criticisms of grant-making practice such those from the LSE’s report and radical suggestions for alternative approaches such as those from the Community Fund and the Impetus Trust.
Lady Diana Brittan, Chair of the Community Fund will speak at the conference
on the Fund’s decision to pursue an ‘investor approach’ to its activities
and Stephen Dawson, Chair of the Impetus Trust Venture Philanthropy Fund will discuss the new forms of venture philanthropy and what they can bring to grantmaking.
David Carrington, formerly Director of two large grantmaking foundations will be making sense of the jargon, discussing the range of new initiatives in the grantmaking field and telling us who is doing what.
The speakers will be followed by a panel session and debate on ‘How much is
really new?’
The conference will be held on Tuesday 29 April at the Business Design Centre, London from 2pm.
It is part of Charityfair, the largest annual event for the voluntary sector
in the UK, held over three days, from Tuesday 29 April to Thursday 1 May.
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.