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Community led funding

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Community Benefit Funds

Over the last 20+ years community benefit funds from renewable projects have become a valuable, even critical, source of independent funding into some of Scotland’s communities.

Provided as a voluntary donation by the owner of the nearby renewables project (which may be a wind farm, a hydro or a battery storage project for example), the annual payments depend on the scale of the project but, in stark contrast to conventional funding, are provided for the operating lifetime of the renewables energy project.

In this way the renewables sector has been quietly blazing a trail with community benefit funds - not only by making the funds available in the first place but also by vesting decision making on fund strategy and spend with the communities themselves who are best place to know and understand the challenges and opportunities they face.

This assured long-term funding can be an incredible opportunity to enable a community to develop and realise its aspirations.

And in the many communities that benefit from these unique independent funds, community benefit funds from renewables are doing just that. They are enabling communities to build more homes, deliver critical services, repurpose neglected assets and build new ones, restore nature, provide training and employment opportunities, operate community businesses, celebrate heritage and culture, invest in their young people….

But that’s not always a straightforward aspiration to realise and brings with it the need to match community ambition and capacity with effective, enduring arrangements about how a fund is governed, structured and administered.

Since 2004 Foundation Scotland has been working alongside renewable energy businesses and communities to help set up and implement a diverse range of community benefit funds where a third party specialist has been welcomed. Donors and clients include both large utilities, renewable energy developers, investment fund and asset managers as well as development trusts, community companies and community councils. In our work to drive up good practice in the design and delivery of community benefit funds, we have always favoured a long-term view, which promotes and harnesses community strengths and supports decision making processes that are inclusive, accountable and community led. Community benefit donations for distribution through Foundation Scotland and with communities at the heart of decision making, totalled over £8,000,000 in 2023/24 which is between one quarter and one third of all community benefit funds operating in Scotland (by fund value).

We are now the leading administrator of community benefit funds in Scotland by volume and the only fund administrator operating nationally.  We have built a strong reputation for high quality services and community-engaged delivery of funds among renewables developers and many communities benefiting from community benefit arrangements, as well as with both Scottish Government and Scottish Renewables, the renewables trade body.

We wrote the Scottish Government’s Community Benefit Toolkit in 2020 and contributed to the Advisory Groups for both versions for the Scottish Government’s Good Practice Principles for Community Benefit from Onshore Renewable Energy Developments (2014, 2019) and contribute regularly to local, regional and national discussion and debate about community benefit. For example:

We also produce Evaluation and Fund Reviews, Annual Reports and Fund Case Studies. 

Evaluation and Fund Reviews

Annual Reports

Fund Case Studies

Other