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Q&A with Bedfordshire & Luton Community Foundation

Bedfordshire & Luton sky line

Q&A with Bedfordshire & Luton Community Foundation

Lead image credit: View of Luton by N Chadwick, CC BY-SA 2.0

We’re proud to work in partnership with a diverse range of organisations across the country, including Bedfordshire & Luton Community Foundation. We sat down to catch up with the community foundation’s CEO, Karen Perkins

1
In a couple of sentences, can you tell us what the BLCF is all about?
We help Community Foundations unlock data-driven insights through in-depth Vital Signs Research (or similar impact reporting models), enabling a deeper understanding of community strengths, challenges, and opportunities
2
You have worked on a wide range of projects with local people and charitable organisations – tell us about one that you are particularly proud of and the impact it had on the local community?
We have worked hard to develop a new, collaborative model of work within the VCSE sector to help charities work together in partnership through understanding their own USP and the skills of others and to reduce duplication and mission creep. This has been particularly successful with our COMF (Contained Outbreak Management Fund) Collaboration project in Luton, bringing lead partners together with groups they hadn’t engaged with to offer further, deeper and more impactful support to their beneficiaries. This model has now been used across a number of our partnership programmes.
3
Tell us about your journey to become CEO of BLCF?
My early career was as an Archaeologist at the British Museum, then I moved to Luton to be curator and later Director of Museums and Culture. In time, my focus moved more to community development and engagement. I built my skills in connecting people and organisations, as well as in supporting communities to create opportunities for their citizens to gain support, help, advice and access to activities and services. During the pandemic I was excited to see a new way my skills could benefit the community and to expand across the whole county, and I moved to be CEO at BLCF in 2021. Since then I have loved working with partners to continue to create and support this approach.
4
What motivates you every day?
I am excited every day by the interconnectivity of people and organisations. I LOVE finding links and helping others to see the ‘art of the possible’.
5
Why do you think Community Foundations are so important? What do they offer that makes them unique?
CFs have a unique role in understanding the needs of our communities as we work more directly with those communities than many other funders and grant makers do. Our approach is to be person focused, supportive and listening and to see the funds we have as ‘their funds’ not ours, and our role is to enable groups to access those funds. Breaking down barriers to access and to ensure equity is core to our work.
6
What are some of the challenges facing Community Foundations?
Like most charities we earn our income and short-term funding is a challenge. We work hard to build long term partnerships and to advocate for our skills in due diligence and understanding of the sector, which helps our donors and stakeholders achieve the outcomes they want but through delivering the needs of the communities.
7
Social Research Builders is incredibly proud to have partnered with Community Foundation for Bedfordshire & Luton – can you give our readers a clue about what to expect from this partnership?
The partnership with SRB is collaborative and one that has a flexibility to support both parties on their journey towards getting the answer we need.
Click here to find out more about Bedfordshire and Luton Community Foundation
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