Polden-Puckham Charitable Foundation: Acknowledgement and Apology
The Polden-Puckham Charitable Foundation (PPCF) is a grant-giving trust with Quaker family roots. We aim to contribute to the development of a just society based on a commitment to nonviolence and environmental sustainability.
Throughout its 33-year history, the Foundation and its trustees have supported initiatives in the fields of peace and security and the environment, recently with a particular focus on climate change.
The assets that we hold were given to the Foundation by family members. The capital originated from (formerly) Quaker owned businesses, including Clarks Shoes.
We have always sought to invest our resources responsibly, in ways that promoted our values and mission and, at the very least, did not contradict or undermine them. However, trustees recognise that the Foundation’s capital, and our privileged role in deciding how it is best spent perpetuates a structural power imbalance, that is a part of the problem we wish to change.
In 2020, the Foundation decided to spend down our assets and will cease to exist by 2028. This decision was taken in large part due to the sense of urgency we felt, in recognition of the imminent dangers of the climate crisis. We also recognise the Foundation’s complicity in the collective harms done by the many forms of capitalism.
Our priority is to address the climate crisis and peace and security by supporting projects that seek to develop alternatives to current economic and social structures, and that influence values and attitudes. We endeavour to include organisations working at national, European, and international levels. Our vision cannot be achieved unless it is pursued in ways that simultaneously create social equity and racial justice - we aim to reflect this in our practice.
The trustees of the Polden-Puckham Charitable Foundation (PPCF) acknowledge that the Foundation is a small part of a much larger system, a system that has exported its values and beliefs globally. The power structures and economic systems upholding this culture have resulted in the exploitation of people, natural resources, and ecosystems. This building and concentration of wealth based on exploitation, with the few deciding where this wealth goes, does not fit our vision of the world we seek.
Our acknowledgement, divestment and spending down are actions we take in our efforts to contribute to the just society that everyone deserves.
We hope to encourage others to take similar actions in the coming years.
The Polden-Puckham Charitable Foundation Trustees and staff sincerely apologise for the negative impacts that the creation and growth of the Foundation’s wealth has had, directly or indirectly, on individuals, families, communities and our shared natural environment.
We are committed to ongoing and future actions that sustain the diversity of life on the planet and equity within human systems.
Thank you and sincerely,
Dorothy Ball
Fiona Duggan
Simon Fisher
Cindy Forde
Jonathan Gillett
Christine Oliver
Stephen Pittam
Angela Seay