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Q&A with the Community Foundation for Surrey

A view of the Surrey Landscape

Q&A with the Community Foundation for Surrey

Photo credit: Himar Santana Hernández via Wikimedia Commons

Dr Beccy Bowden, Chief Executive of the Community Foundation for Surrey, on creating a fairer county for everyone and seeing opportunities in amongst challenges

1
In a couple of sentences, can you tell us what the Community Foundation for Surrey is all about?
The Community Foundation for Surrey connects people and businesses who wish to support charities in Surrey with charities and community groups working to support those most in need in our county. We turn private money into community funds.
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?
The Community Foundation awards around £2m worth of grants every year in Surrey to hundreds of organisations and individuals. In recent years we are very proud of our new Mental Health Scale-Up Fund which was set up to address the crisis in young people’s mental health following Covid and lockdown. The fund brings together 4 family foundations, Surrey County Council and Surrey heartlands NHS to co-fund significant projects to scale-up services supporting young people’s good mental health. The aim is to ensure that young people can access help and support to prevent mental health crisis wherever they live in the county. By coming together, these funders have been able to award 5-year grants of around £0.25m each, enabling a significant increase in the services available to support our young people. The programme has funded a range of preventative work – from enabling primary school children to better understand their mental health and feelings, to supporting the mental health of new mums from minoritised ethnic groups.
3
Tell us about your journey to become CEO of the Community Foundation for Surrey?
I took on the role of CEO at CFSurrey in 2021 after 5 years as CEO of the Heathrow Community Trust, which is the corporate charity of Heathrow airport and awards around £1m of grants per year across 9 boroughs. I moved into funding after 9 years of being a CEO of a youth charity in Surrey, which is also the county I live in, so working for the CFSurrey is a real pleasure and definitely feels like ‘coming home’!

For 13 years before joining the charity world, I lived in Surrey but commuted into London where I was a senior civil servant. Working in the county has enabled me to find out about many of the hidden aspects of Surrey – good and bad!
4
What motivates you every day?
All of us on the team at CFSurrey do our jobs because we want to make the world a better place; specifically, we believe in a fairer Surrey for all its residents. It is a real honour and pleasure to be able to support people to make a positive difference to the area that they live in.
5
How can people support the Community Foundation for Surrey?

www.cfsurrey.org.uk explains what we do and how to get involved – you can donate direct to support our work, and we also welcome volunteers if you have time to give and would like to get involved. We work with a very wide range of people – anyone who loves the county and wants to ensure it’s a better, fairer place for everyone.

6
Why do you think Community Foundations are so important? What do they offer that makes them unique?
Community Foundations are vital for saving time and money because they help people to identify how they can squeeze the absolute biggest impact they can out of every penny they can give away. They really care about the organisations they provide funding to, and about all their donors too. I am amazed how expert we are as individual foundations – we really know our areas inside out. But also, the network of 47 community foundations works really well to help each other. Its an incredibly powerful network of people who are experts at supporting the smallest grassroot organisations, whoa re often making dramatic impacts to the local community.
7
What are some of the challenges facing Community Foundations?
The economic crisis of recent years has exacerbated existing divisions between those who are ‘getting by’ and those who are ‘struggling’. Those most in need in our communities are facing multiple challenges including basic access to food, warmth and decent accommodation. There are real challenges too with cuts in public sector funding – governments local and national have had to make really tough decisions about what funding they have and what constitutes an essential service. These has hit small local charities very badly, but has also hit individuals like carers or those with long-term health conditions.

I see real opportunities though – in such a situation we must all work together because no one has enough funding to go round. We are increasingly working in partnership with other funders – matching what funds we are able to award, and bringing other ‘resource’ such a volunteer time.
8
Social Research Builders is incredibly proud to have worked with the Community Foundation for Surrey. Can you give our readers a clue about what to expect from this partnership?
We really enjoyed working with Social Research Builders and would definitely recommend you to others. Your work was highly efficient – always delivering to deadlines, and very high quality. You’re in depth knowledge of how community foundations work was a real bonus, but also your clear empathy for the charities that we support was important to us. Your writing is also excellent – you make complex issues very easy to understand.
Find out more about the Community Foundation for Surrey here
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