UK Community Foundations recently marked the centenary of the community foundation movement at its annual symposium in London, with a special birthday message from the Governor of the Bank of England Mark Carney.

Mark Carney said: “Community foundations are vital contributors to building social capital. They also play a vital role by providing a platform that enables individuals and firms to invest in their communities. Community foundations are helping to deliver a more inclusive capitalism, one in which individual virtue and collective prosperity can flourish.”

There are now 1,800 community foundations worldwide. In the late 1980s the movement crossed the Atlantic to the UK: 48 are currently active across the country, investing £65m in grants in community-led charities last year alone. Each community foundation provides a personal service for individuals, families and companies - helping them invest their money, time and skills to meet the specific needs of their local communities.

Over the last 10 years, UK Community Foundations hace distributed £637m in grants, to almost 200,000 community-led projects.

Chief Executive Stephen Hammersley said: “It’s been an honour to steer UKCF through the last decade. We’ve been able to show the immense power and value of community-led solutions and connect many philanthropically minded people and companies with this world where a little charitable money goes a long, long way. Take, for example, the food banks in Northampton: able to better help people with the causes of their food poverty thanks to a grant from a local philanthropist.

“My time at UKCF has taken in the toughest period for charities in this country and beyond, when the recession hit in 2008. I’m proud of how community foundations have grown through this period, providing funding for vital charities that otherwise might have closed. In aggregate, community foundations are now the leading source of finance for community-led social action in the UK...Philanthropy in the UK has changed beyond recognition over the last 20 years, and community foundations have played a big role in that. I expect that they will continue to play centre stage over the next hundred years.”