A Review of Foundation Scotland’s Approach to Community Benefit Funds

Rebecca Gowens; Matthew Hannon; Jennifer J. Roberts; Iain Cairns; Laura Major

doi:10.17868/strath.00094730

A Review of Foundation Scotland’s Approach to Community Benefit Funds

Research output: Book/Report › Other report

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Abstract

A Community Benefit Fund (CBF) is a voluntary fund that is capitalised by a project developer or owner(s), based on a pre-agreed package of community benefits for one or more communities as outlined in a Community Benefit Agreement (CBA). These packages typically involve annual payments and/or in-kind community benefits that are proportional to the scale of the project. The fund is normally governed and re-invested locally, with the aim of generating community benefits through sharing project revenue with communities to invest in local priorities.

Original language	English
Place of Publication	Glasgow
Publisher	University of Strathclyde
Commissioning body	Foundation Scotland
Number of pages	88
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.17868/strath.00094730
Publication status	Published - 24 Oct 2025

Funding

This report has been funded via two sources. The first is through Foundation Scotland, who commissioned the work and who also aided in shaping the scope of the project, providing us with a significant amount of information regarding their work around community benefit funds. The second source is the Strathclyde Business School Knowledge Exchange Fund. This fund promotes university staff to work alongside non-academic organisations in order to either co-produce information or exchange knowledge between them. We thank both funders for their support in delivering this work, alongside Strathclyde Business School, Faculty of Engineering and the University of Strathclyde investment in the cross-Faculty Strathclyde Institute for Sustainable Communities (SISC).

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

SDG 10 Reduced Inequalities
SDG 11 Sustainable Cities and Communities

Keywords

community benefit fund
community investment investment
sustainable communities

Access to Document

10.17868/strath.00094730Licence: CC BY 4.0

Gowens-etal-UoS-2025-A-Review-of-Foundation-Scotlands-Approach-to-Community-Benefit-FundsFinal published version, 2.53 MBLicence: CC BY 4.0

1 Other report

A Review of Foundation Scotland’s Approach to Community Benefit Funds: Executive Summary
Gowens, R., Hannon, M., Roberts, J. J., Cairns, I. & Major, L., 24 Oct 2025, Glasgow: University of Strathclyde. 9 p.
Research output: Book/Report › Other report

Open Access
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Cite this

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A Review of Foundation Scotland’s Approach to Community Benefit Funds

Abstract

Funding

UN SDGs

Keywords

Access to Document

Fingerprint

Research output

A Review of Foundation Scotland’s Approach to Community Benefit Funds: Executive Summary

Cite this