Director’s report

Developing our impact

We published our current strategic plan in November 2006. This Yearbook is the sixth we have produced under that plan, and in November 2012 we will be publishing a report on the impact of our work during this period. This includes both the work of the organisations we have funded and the Special Initiatives we have carried out, in partnership with others.

Our strategic plan was due to end in 2012 but trustees have decided to roll it forward, recognising the need to reflect fully on the impact of our work, and also to give further time for the changes introduced in the light of the mid-term review of our plan to bed down. We have decided to repeat in 2013 the Grantee Perception survey which the Center for Effective Philanthropy carried out on our behalf in 2009/10. This will also help to inform our future thinking.

The information about the impact of our grants and activities will also become a key part of the way in which we fulfil the legal duty placed on all charities to report on the benefit they provide to the public. The Foundation as a charity benefits from a reduced tax bill, which is a further reason we report as fully as possible on how we deliver public benefit. Though the attribution of cause and effect for grant-making foundations is a challenging area, our work this year will provide the most detailed picture to date of our overall impact.

Published findings

In other respects, 2011/12 was a big year for research and learning at the Foundation. Our Special Initiatives are always informed by the research we carry out before we implement activity, and in most cases they are also underpinned by a theory of change. This year we commissioned independent research on girls and the criminal justice system, which we hope will form the basis for a future Special Initiative. We also commissioned (jointly with the Baring and Nuffield foundations) the Centre for Charitable Giving and Philanthropy at Cass Business School to review UK foundations’ funding for international development, which was published as ‘Global grant-making’. ¹

Under our Learning Futures Special Initiative we published a range of leaflets detailing methodologies and approaches to teaching and learning developed during the programme. Ongoing management of this work will pass to the Innovation Unit, our partner in Learning Futures’ development, during 2012/13, from where we expect these findings to continue to reach new audiences and have continued impact. The year also saw the final stages of development for a report on the findings of our What Works? initiative, also under the Education and Learning programme. The findings offer powerful insight into how young people can be supported to continue in higher education and maximise their potential.

I am grateful to David Carrington for his contribution to this Yearbook. Based on investigations into the role of research and learning by foundations in the UK, his insightful article places our own efforts in a wider context. He is a leading member of a small team that has undertaken a research initiative of the European Foundation Centre (EFC) whose aim is to enhance the role of learning and research within foundation practice in Europe. The research findings were launched at the annual conference of the EFC which took place in June 2012 in Belfast. The conference was supported with a contribution from PHF.

Resilience

We are aware of the challenges faced by many organisations in a difficult funding climate – a theme echoed across each of our UK programme reports in this Yearbook. We continue to monitor the impact of the changes likely to result from the provisions of the Localism Act 2011 and the Government’s Big Society initiative.

We know that foundations’ funding of organisations can provide vital stability. While most of our grants are awarded for up to three years in the first instance, we have long aimed at increasing the level of follow-on funding to enable us to see through work that we know to be having a positive impact, and to support organisations we know to be doing good work to continue. Our Open Grants portfolio this year shows increased spending on these areas, across our three UK programmes.

We have also continued to develop our non- monetary support. This year we developed further the documents we issue when making a grant through our Open Grants schemes, including revised guidance on reporting and a new ‘relationship agreement’, designed to set the mutual expectations for engagement after the confirmation of a grant. It underpins the joint process of setting outcomes for the funded activity, and defines ongoing contact through the life of a grant.

We believe these are important developments for ensuring consistency across our grantee relationships and for helping us to deliver enhanced value to the organisations we support – with the ultimate goal of securing greater gains in life chances for the individuals with whom they work. Full documentation is available from the Grant holders section of our website.

A further strategic aim of the Foundation is to support the wider philanthropic sector through our activities. Our Director of Finance and Resources, Lucy Palfreyman, was in February elected chair of the Finance, Investment and Resource Management Network, which consists of finance directors from large UK foundations. The group discusses emerging issues concerning various functions within foundations.Lucy, with some colleagues from the group, commissioned and oversaw the publication of a report by Richard Jenkins, ‘The Governance and Financial Management of Endowed Charitable Foundations’, published by the Association of Charitable Foundations.

We continue to seek to reach as broad an audience as possible for our work and have increasingly used Twitter alongside our website and newsletters to do this. We are encouraged by the levels of followers we have attracted, since this offers such a rapid means of sharing information and learning. ²

This year we welcomed several new members of staff, including Sachin Sachdeva, our new India Director. Sachin was previously programme director at the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation, leading its work on community education, and before that was senior programme officer for health at the Sir Dorabji Tata Trust, the premier independent foundation in India. He worked for many years as the founding executive director of Aravali, which helps NGOs in Rajasthan with training and other capacity building. Aravali is currently funded by PHF. Sachin is leading on the development of our next strategic plan for India.

The coming year will see us marking the Foundation’s 25th anniversary. As we look forward to celebrating this milestone the occasion also provides an opportunity to reflect on achievements to date and, as we develop our ongoing strategic plan, to ensure we continue to have meaningful impact into the future.

Robert Dufton
Director