The fifth round of Quality Accreditation, launched in October 2020, is now complete. Over the past year Hertfordshire Community Foundation has had an internal audit of its policies and procedures, compiled a submission of documents for external review and participated in interviews with an independent assessor.
The assessment, which was carried out by Ideas to Impact, evaluated the ongoing practices and development trajectory of Hertfordshire Community Foundation within Core Standards on governance, finance, philanthropy, grant-making, community participation and organisational development. The programme is unique to the UK Community Foundations (UKCF) network, providing the only accreditation process internationally that is tailored to and designed by community foundations.
The Quality Accreditation assessment has revealed that Hertfordshire Community Foundation has provided evidence that demonstrates either good or excellent practice across all 14 Core Standards.
“Helping Hertfordshire’s communities to thrive underpins all that we do at Hertfordshire Community Foundation. This must be underpinned by good governance and financial best practice. Participating in regular independent assessments ensures that we continue to improve our processes for the benefit of the county. The team at HCF is delighted to have scored highly across all assessment areas. This reflects the team’s ongoing commitment to improve lives in Hertfordshire through grant making and supporting local philanthropy.” - Helen Gray, Foundation Director, Hertfordshire Community Foundation
Across the UK community foundation network the assessment revealed that:
The value of grant-making in the UKCF network more than doubled during the Covid-19 Pandemic
Total community foundation endowment across the membership has grown by 30% since QA4 in 2017
Community foundations were exceptionally skilled in rapidly activating local philanthropy and delivering funding to support community-led responses to crisis including the pandemic.
“It is a mark of the commitment and diligence of our members that they have completed this rigorous accreditation process at the same time as distributing record-breaking levels of funding to their communities. The UKCF team is proud to support a network which reaches every part of the UK and whose good practice has been so clearly demonstrated throughout this process.” – Rosemary Macdonald, CEO of UKCF
Quality Accreditation will last for three years until October 2024 and is an initiative designed to provide collective due diligence that confirms community foundations have the capacity to deliver grants and programmes on a national level. It promotes excellent practice across the community foundation network to ensure that they can utilise their resources most effectively to listen, support and advocate for their communities.