SERVING OUR MEMBERS – THE ROAD AHEAD

At the start of 2022, ACF started a dialogue with members and others about our new five-year strategy. Your feedback was invaluable. Carol Mack, ACF chief executive, sets out some of the thinking behind the 2023-27 strategy, approved by ACF’s board this autumn.

Back in February we asked you, our members, to help us with phase one of developing our new strategy. Over the course of that month, you told us what you thought the opportunities and challenges were for foundations over the next five years, how to describe ACF in three words, what would help foundations be ambitious and effective, and who we should be collaborating with and on what.

Building on your responses we worked up some initial ideas, which we developed over the summer with feedback from members, staff, our board, and critical friends, in numerous workshops, meetings and interactions. For example, some of you came to a strategy workshop just before our June AGM.

There were several inflection points, key decisions we needed to take, which, although not prominent in the crisp final form of the strategy, were nevertheless crucial in scoping what is in – and as importantly – what is not in the final strategy.

How We Support Foundations

ACF is a relatively small organisation, and although personally I’d often thought of ourselves as a “one stop shop”, this underestimates the range of diverse needs that foundations have, as well as the many groups that offer specialist expertise and creative thought leadership to our sector.

Most recently the experience of developing the Funders’ Collaborative Hub, which now showcases over 110 collaborations between funders, was ample proof, if any were needed, that ACF cannot do it all, and shouldn’t try to.

Our first response was that perhaps

GRANT-MAKING IS REALLY, REALLY IMPORTANT

It was striking that most of the feedback from external stakeholders was about the way in which foundations make grants, and the role that ACF can play in encouraging good practice. Funding practice is one of the six themes considered by our Stronger Foundations initiative, in which we recognise that grant-making is “where the rubber hits the road”, encouraging foundations to think hard about the demands they place on others.

we needed to be more of a “first port of call” – the place that foundations initially turn to when they need external support. But when we consulted members about this over the summer, the feedback came through loud and clear that this sounded like dodging the issue; as if members would turn to ACF only to be sent off on a wild goose chase somewhere else to find the help they needed.

In partnership with members, we developed the concept of being the “go-to place for advice and information tailored to the foundation sector”. This sounds straightforward but to live up to the promise of this simple phrase, ACF will need to curate inspiring, practical and accessible learning and support, and share practical tools and resources to enable and empower stronger foundations.

We will also need to develop a deeper understanding of the charitable funding ecosystem of which we are a part, identify gaps and work with others to fill them, and develop the knowledge and expertise to point members to the right resources for them.

The good news is that there are many initiatives focused on better grantmaking – including IVAR’s flexible funding commitments, #FixTheForm, and the diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) data standard, to name but three. There is more good news: ACF members are prominent in many of these initiatives, and there is lots of great practice by members to draw on. So the new strategy will see us creating opportunities to work with partners towards common goals as we continue to support foundations to achieve excellent practice. We want to cultivate vibrant communities of practice, strengthening connections across and beyond the sector.

None of this is to say that we will abandon our focus on the power of endowments to effect change and to enable foundations to continue their grant-making. To reiterate the oft-quoted Jed Emerson, to look at a foundation and see the grants, is like looking at a horse and seeing the manure. We should not lose sight of the potential to harness the power of the endowment beast in service of the charitable mission.

Growing Institutional Philanthropy

Another strand of work that we considered was ACF’s responsibility for supporting and growing institutional philanthropy. Given the difficult fiscal environment, it is clear that public sector funding for charitable causes will be in short supply, and early indications are that donations from a hard-pressed public will also come under pressure. Foundations are an important piece of the funding pie, and growing that piece of the pie will help the communities and causes that members care about.

But what, we wondered, did that mean for ACF?

There are many brilliant organisations already working to encourage philanthropy – CAF, The Beacon Collaborative, Philanthropy Impact – too many to namecheck them all. So it is important that ACF doesn’t step into this space in a way that duplicates, but rather that is helpful and adds value. We concluded that as the leading membership association for foundations, aka institutional philanthropy, our contribution will be about how we can effect positive change with and for our members.

ADVANCING DIVERSITY, EQUITY AND INCLUSION

We also looked long and hard at our role in advancing diversity, equity and inclusion in our sector. We started out with expansive aspirations but with the help of specialist consultancy, Diversity and Ability, we realised that these ambitions needed to be grounded in practical action. And they needed to be realistic about our starting point, including what ACF does and is – that we must “be the change we want to see”.

So our strategy will see us taking practical steps to advance diversity, equity and inclusion for our sector and for ACF. We will do this by building and sustaining a diverse membership, championing and celebrating practice which addresses systemic inequities, and gathering and sharing data to deepen our understanding of barriers to, and support progress towards, diversity, equity and inclusion. This builds on the work we and our members have done over the past five years.

A Compelling Member Offer

So what next? Well, firstly, my thanks to all those who helped us shape the new strategy, which we think is bold, ambitious and responds to what you told us. We will be formally launching it in the new year and will then want to collaborate with you about the changes we will need to make to achieve our goals – especially in such challenging times.

While we will refresh our vision and purpose in the new strategy, what will not change are our values – that ACF cares, and is open, evidence-based and ambitious. And what will also not change is our commitment to you, our members. We are first and foremost a membership association – that is the bedrock of everything we do. Ensuring that we continue to have a compelling member offer is perhaps the most critical success factor on which all of our strategy depends. To this end we want to make sure that our membership offer represents value for foundations, regardless of your size, area of interest and location in the UK. And we want to continue to grow and strengthen our membership community over the next five years. Here’s to 2023 and beyond!