Exploring UK foundations’ grantmaking approaches – Catalyst for Impact

Dr Janis Petzinger will lead a session at the ‘Catalyst for Impact’ charity network event exploring UK foundations’ historic and contemporary grantmaking approaches. She will show how foundations have tackled poverty through different forms of knowledge: a top-down approach, whereby foundations pull from rationalist, financialised approaches, and a bottom-up approach, where foundations embed themselves locally and use grassroots experiences of a particular area as the departure point for grantmaking approaches. As foundations move towards the latter through community philanthropy, Janis will use the community philanthropy kaleidoscope as a framing device for practitioners and academics to embrace the complex solutions needed to address localised poverty.