£450k grant to help revive rural communities
Howard Lake | 21 November 2012 | News
The Esmée Fairbairn Foundation has granted over £450,000 to The Plunkett Foundation to help it support the revival of villages through community enterprise.
The Plunkett Foundation will use the funding to to create a support service for rural communities which are thinking about setting up or diversifying community-owned services such as shops and pubs.
It is estimated that community shops save around 10% of the estimated 400 village shops that close annually. Once open they stay tend to remain open: 97% of shops to have opened in the past 25 years have stayed open.
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The funding follows the Foundation’s hugely successful Village CORE programme, also funded by Esmée Fairbairn, which helped nearly 100 rural communities in their efforts to save their village shop.
The support is focused in particular on supporting a community at the early stages of its ideas, helping them to progress. To be eligible, communities will need to raise at last £10,000 themselves by offering shares to the whole community.
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James Alcock, Head of Frontline at the Plunkett Foundation, explained the focus on shares. He said: "This approach has been extremely successful for enterprises like shops and pubs, allowing them to raise a significant amount of money in often a short space of time whilst ensuring the success of the enterprise is rooted in the whole community, empowering residents to make a difference and ensuring long-term sustainability.”
This new service will open for applications on 3 December, and Plunkett encourages rural communities who need support for their enterprises to contact them directly for more information via 01993 810730 or by emailing in**@*********co.uk.
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.