Church Urban Fund: Ending Poverty Together
The Church Urban Fund was founded as a practical response to the extensive urban deprivation identified in the 1985 Faith in the City report, an early Archbishops’ Commission inspired by Archbishop Robert Runcie. We began as a grant-maker with an aim of bringing resources to ‘urban priority areas’. Endowed with a blend of capital from the Church Commissioners and by public subscription, we were – perhaps still are – known as a funder of small-scale faith-based projects mostly set up and run in Church of England parishes by clergy and volunteers. We believe this work remains transformative.
In 2010, the endowment having been spent down, a decision was made to transition the organisation from grant-maker to capacity-builder. Through 21 partnerships with 20 of Church of England’s 42 dioceses, we began connecting the people who had responsibility for driving faith-based social action in each area. We helped them share learning and raised resources for them to allocate locally. In this time, CUF, in partnership with the Archbishops’ Council, established Near Neighbours to take the lead on practical interfaith work in some of England’s most diverse communities. The Just Finance Foundation followed with its own focus on financial literacy.
By 2019, another change seemed necessary. Though we had been successful in ensuring social action remained important to the dioceses in which we worked, we had become too distant from the frontline – the Parish – where the real action takes place and we knew there remained much potential to be tapped. Moreover, we needed to be able to associate ourselves with that action in order to sustain investment.
Following the deep uncertainties of COVID, both within the church and in wider society, in 2023 we began a further stakeholder engagement survey, during which the Chief Executive visited 35 of the 42 Dioceses across the Church of England. This listening exercise highlighted the need for further reform in the charity, with stakeholders arguing that we were too distant and disparate.
In addition, we have undertaken a series of reviews to help shape this next phase of the life of the charity; fundraising, governance and safeguarding- all of which have been independent. This body of work has shaped the emerged vision, mission, strategy, emerging theory of change and objectives, undergirded by an agreed set of behaviours / values. These are listed below.
