Community organising

MS 1579/2/17

Community organising

1990 - 2005

Copyright: Barrow Cadbury Trust and others

Partially Closed (Data Protection Act)

Organisations involved: Barrow Cadbury Trust, Barrow Cadbury Fund Ltd., Community Organising Programme.

Previous titles and/or title variations: community democracy.

Related grant categories: neighbourhood development, Northern Ireland; inclusive communities.

Dates of use: 1994/1995 to 2002/2003.

Cadbury Trusts grant subject filing reference number(s): 7 (informal).

The community organising category was established in 1994/1995 under the heading 'community democracy' to continue aspects of neighbourhood development work carried out by the Paul S. Cadbury Trust. Following the merger of the Paul S. Cadbury Trust with the Barrow and Geraldine S. Cadbury Trust in 1994 Trustees decided to create a new category based around the community organising work of the Citizen Organising Foundation. To populate this new category, select grants from the defunct neighbourhood development heading were transferred to community democracy. The Community Democracy Programme was created to supervise grant making in this area under Relevant Trustees Charles Cadbury, Catherine Hickinbotham, Ruth Cadbury and James Cadbury.

In 1995/1996 the community democracy category was renamed 'community organising' with a corresponding change to the name of the programme. Community democracy was elevated to a super-category that included the Community Organising Programme, Justice and Peace Programme and the short-lived Northern Ireland Programme. In 1998/1999 the overarching community democracy super-category was eliminated. This change does not appear to have affected the operation of the constituent Justice and Peace and Community Organising Programmes which continued to function as normal.

The purpose of grants made under the community organising heading was to promote the concept of community organising with a particular focus on grassroots organisations. The Programme operated on the regional level supporting the West Midlands Planning Aid Society and on the national level as a major supporter of the Citizen Organising Foundation. During its first year of operation total community organising expenditure totalled over £350,000 to twenty-seven grantees, the greatest programme commitment for that financial year. By 1998/1999 spending increased to almost £700,000 disbursed to forty-nine grantees. Community organising remained the largest single programme with an expanded remit for community initiatives in Northern Ireland. By its final year as an independent category, 2002/2003, total community organising expenditure had been reduced to £405,000 with £250,000 allocated to the running costs of the Citizen Organising Foundation.

The first grant files under the community organising heading appear in the mid-1990s. However, existing grants transferred to the category often retain their original, pre-merger file references. The preponderance of community organising grants were administered by Eric Adams, a major advocate of the Programme. Some of Adams' files retain the old informal file reference code for neighbourhood development work '7'. However the preponderance of these grant files contain no file references and simply bear the name of the grantee. Copy minutes from the Community Organising Programme may appear in grant files in addition to relevant Trust or Fund minutes.

In 2003/2004 the community organising category was deleted as part of a further reorganisation of grant categories. Most grants made under this heading, together with those from other defunct programmes including racial justice, disability and gender, were transferred to the new Inclusive Communities Programme.