The Foundation Practice Rating: enhancing diversity, transparency and accountability

The Foundation Practice Rating is designed to enhance grant-making foundations’ practices in terms of diversity, transparency, and accountability. First formed in 2021 by Friends Provident Foundation, the project is now in its fourth year.

City Bridge Foundation joined the initiative in 2022. Equity, diversity and inclusion is at the heart of all we do, so this was a project we were happy to support, and learn from.

Each year the Foundation publishes an annual, objective assessment of 100 UK-based charitable grant-making foundations. Foundation’s are largely chosen at random, and cannot opt out. 

Assessment is based on publicly-accessible information shared by foundations on their websites and in their annual reports. Foundation staff and trustees don’t have to do anything, although they can reply with feedback after initial assessment.

The process is so thorough and helpful that some foundations, which haven’t been selected for assessment, have paid to be reviewed separately. These foundations aren’t included in the latest report.

Findings are scored from A to D, with City Bridge Foundation scoring B. This year we almost got an A grade and that drives us to do better, to secure an A rating next year and to continuously improve.

The Foundation Practice Rating focuses on driving positive change across grant-making foundations. It is not about inducing guilt or shame.

Through its work, it encourages clearer, more accessible funding and transparency, benefitting the wider charitable sector. Applying for funding can be a relentless, never-ending battle for many charitable organisations, especially the smaller ones. The Foundation Practice Rating exists to make application processes easier to understand, ensuring important information is easy to find and act on.

Fixes don’t have to be expensive or time-consuming. And while larger foundations may have bigger staff teams and budgets, that doesn’t necessarily result in higher rankings.

The Foundation Practice Rating is a useful tool, always providing food for thought, and we value its feedback.

Each year, foundations are asked to make three commitments to actions they will take over the coming year. For City Bridge Foundation, these three commitments are:

• We commit to sharing research into the effectiveness of our funding and developing our impact and learning approach to match the changing needs of London’s communities
• We commit to streamlining our application and assessment processes to be faster, more efficient, and more inclusive
• We commit to embedding the priorities and principles of EDI into every aspect of our service delivery

You can download the latest 2024/2025 report and learn more about the work of the Foundation Practice Rating on their website.