A goodbye from our Chair – Jamie Ward-Smith MBE
As my time as the Chair of the Board of Trustees has come to an end, it gives me great joy to take this opportunity to look back on the Foundation’s journey since I joined the board back in 2016 and celebrate everything that we have achieved.
I feel enormously proud to have been a part of our transformation into a progressive grantmaking and campaigning foundation, bringing our co-operative values and the rich history of the Co-op into the heart of all we do.
Co-operation influencing what we do
Back in 1844 the Rochdale Pioneers designed the Rochdale principles, a set of principles of co-operation, that influenced how co-ops around the world operate. Taking inspiration from them, we at the Co-op Foundation hope to encourage more of our fellow funders to adopt similar principles, making it the norm to work closely with communities, listen to their needs, and focus on shifting the power to those who have the most at stake, especially young people.
My highlights
Some of my personal highlights have been the amazing Lonely not Alone campaign and its pioneering youth-led approach; being the first to offer interest free social loans, truly delivering on co-operative values of self-help and self-responsibility; our start up grants for charity digital code, helping all charities, regardless of size, budget, or cause, to embrace digital; and the investment we’ve made in diversifying charity boards through our support to Action for Trustee Racial Diversity and Young Trustee Movement.
Our commitment to putting young people at the heart of the Foundation continues to shape all that we do. In 2022 we collaborated with a diverse group of 96 young people, aged 11 to 25 across the UK to develop our Future Communities Vision – a vision of fair communities in 10 years’ time built on co-operative values.
This vision inspired our five-year strategy – Building communities of the future together, with a commitment to deliver funding that is long-term and unrestricted and includes those with lived experience in designing the fund and awarding the funding. The Future Communities Fund was our first fully unrestricted grant programme with the funding allocated by our Future Communities Collective – a group of seven young people from diverse backgrounds – alongside two of our own young trustees. We awarded 13 five-year grants with a combined investment of £1.4m.
Looking to the future
Looking to the future, I am excited to see the impact our young gamechangers will make in transforming their communities; and look forward to the launch of the second round of the Future Communities Fund in 2025.
It is with mixed emotions that I step down from my role as Chair after eight years; a sense of sadness that our incredible journey draws to an end, but also an immense sense of pride in what we have built together. It has been an absolute joy to see our vision come to life and to see how many lives we have helped to change for the better. I have been blessed to have worked with such an amazing team, from my brilliant fellow Trustees, our incredibly passionate staff team, our awesome young volunteers and of course the many partners that we have worked with to build co-operative communities for the future. Thanks to all of them for making this such a happy experience for me that I will forever treasure. But I’m sure that this is not the end of my journey with the Foundation and I look forward to following the many more achievements that are bound to come in the years ahead!