17. April 2026

The Government Wants More Money Flowing Into Disadvantaged Communities. Trustees Should Read the Small Print.

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Last month I asked whether charity funding is rigged. This week, the Government published a plan that could change the answer — or entrench it further, depending on how it lands.

Our Place to Give was released on 13 April 2026. It sets out a strategy for growing place-based philanthropy in England: directing more private money — from wealthy individuals, foundations, and impact investors — into the communities that are most chronically underfunded. On the surface, it is a welcome and thoughtful piece of policy. But trustees of small and medium charities need to read it carefully, because it contains both genuine opportunity and a set of structural questions that nobody is asking loudly enough yet.

More money is coming. But not necessarily to you.

The plan has three pillars. The first focuses on connecting philanthropists with local giving initiatives — community foundations, giving circles, diaspora networks — and investing £1 million in a Community of Practice to share learning and build capability across England. The second is about building better partnerships between government and major philanthropists, with a new network of regional ambassadors and a "think philanthropy" approach to flagship government programmes like Pride in Place. The third, and most complex, is about unlocking new forms of philanthropic investment — blended finance models where government de-risks private money to make it flow into places it wouldn't otherwise reach.

Each pillar has real merit. The Community of Practice is the kind of infrastructure the sector has needed for years. The match-funding approach — where public investment acts as a trigger for philanthropic capital — has a strong evidence base. And the regional inequality that underpins the whole plan is stark: London currently receives more than a third of funding from the largest philanthropic foundations, and four times the Gift Aid value of anywhere else in the country. The ambition to address that is right.

But ambition and architecture are different things. And the architecture of this plan raises questions that trustees need to sit with.

Who decides what a community needs?

The plan celebrates place-based giving — philanthropy directed by people with a connection to, or affection for, a specific place. Diaspora networks. Alumni giving. High-net-worth individuals putting money back into the towns that shaped them. There are genuinely moving examples in the document: a reading age gap closed in North Birkenhead, a creative quarter built in Folkestone, a fund in Grimsby shaped by 1,100 residents.

But place-based giving is still giving. Which means someone is still deciding what problems are worth solving, what success looks like, and whose priorities matter most. When the driver is a major philanthropist rather than a statutory funder, that question of power doesn't disappear — it just moves. The plan acknowledges, rightly, that "local and on-the-ground partners are best placed to make decisions about their own communities." Whether the architecture of these new partnerships actually delivers that remains to be seen.

Trustees should ask: when a philanthropist or investor comes to the table, who shapes the agenda?

Blended finance has different rules. This matters more than it sounds.

The third pillar introduces something that will be unfamiliar to many boards: blended finance. Here is how it works in practice.

Imagine a supported housing project wanting to purchase and refurbish a property. Instead of a single grant, the funding might look like this: £250,000 of government-backed first-loss capital — meaning if the project fails, this money takes the hit first, protecting everyone else. £500,000 from a private investor, reassured by that buffer and expecting a modest return over time. £250,000 from the charity itself, through reserves, donations, or grants. The investor is repaid through rental income. The charity delivers the mission.

This model can work. It has worked, in the right circumstances, for the right organisations. But it comes with a different set of questions than a grant application does. Investors ask whether the model can scale, whether it can generate income, and whether it can repay — at least in part. These are not unreasonable questions. But they are the wrong questions for a significant proportion of the most important charitable work happening in this country.

Crisis support does not scale neatly. Pastoral care does not generate income. Deep relational work with isolated people rarely produces a measurable return. If investment begins to define what is worth doing, we will systematically defund the work that is hardest to quantify and most essential to communities.

The Government's own plan states explicitly that "philanthropy can play a complementary role to public money, but is not a substitute for state funding." That is a reassuring line. Whether it holds in practice, over the course of a parliament and beyond, is a different question.

The organisations this favours are not necessarily the ones that need it most.

Blended finance models tend to suit larger organisations: those with assets, financial literacy, a track record, and the governance capacity to manage complex funding structures. Reporting requirements tighten. Risk management becomes a board-level competency, not just an operational one. Intermediaries appear between the charity and the investor. Trustees need to understand financial models, not just mission.

None of this is inherently wrong. But it is worth being honest that the plan begins by talking about the smallest and most under-resourced charities, while the mechanisms it introduces most heavily favour organisations that are already better resourced.

The danger is not that this policy fails. It is that it succeeds — but for a different set of organisations than the ones most in need of it.

What this means for your board

Not every charity needs to engage with blended finance. Most shouldn't — yet, and possibly ever. But every board operating in England should understand that the funding landscape is shifting, and that this plan is one of the forces shaping it.

There are three conversations worth having in the boardroom.

The first is about fit. Does your organisation have the characteristics — assets, trading income, measurable outcomes, financial infrastructure — that make social investment a realistic option? If yes, the Community of Practice and the new government pipelines are worth tracking closely. If no, that is not a failure. It is clarity.

The second is about mission drift. If investment capital does become available to you, what would you have to change to access it? And is that change something you would choose, or something you would accept under financial pressure? The time to think about that is before the money arrives, not after.

The third is about the work that won't attract investment. Crisis support. Pastoral care. Advocacy. Relational work. If those activities are central to your mission, your funding strategy needs to protect them — through grants, through donations, through reserves — and your board needs to own that strategy explicitly. The risk is not that investment crowds out grants. It is that organisations begin redesigning themselves around what is investable, quietly and incrementally, until one day the mission has moved and nobody quite noticed.

The plan is better than it sounds. And more complicated.

Our Place to Give is not a cynical document. The case studies are real. The ambition is genuine. And the acknowledgement that regional inequality in philanthropy is a structural problem worth solving — not just a market inefficiency — is the right starting point.

But good policy creates new pressures as well as new possibilities. The question for trustees is not whether this plan is welcome. It is whether your organisation is ready to navigate it with your mission intact.

Investment rewards what can be measured and monetised. Charity often exists for what can't. This plan doesn't change that tension. It intensifies it.

If you'd like to think through what this shift means for your organisation's funding strategy, get in touch.

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