Plunkett Foundation

Plunkett Foundation helps rural communities in the UK to take control of the issues affecting them through community ownership.

The Foundation's work includes:

Plunkett Foundation was founded in 1919 by the pioneer of rural co-operation in Ireland, Sir Horace Plunkett. Since being founded it has been involved in a range of work relating to international development, rural development and agricultural development. It is based in Oxfordshire, England.

To celebrate 2012 being designated as the United Nations International Year of Co-operatives Plunkett Foundation held the World of Rural Co-operation International Roundtable event. This event led to the development of the Dunsany Declaration for Rural Co-operative Development which has fed in to the Blueprint for a Co-operative Decade.

On 21 December 1918, Horace Plunkett, then in his 65th year, wrote in his diary, "Most of the day with Adams. Agreed to make him and A.D. Hall trustees of my new rural reconstruction bequest and donation. I meditate starting this thing during my life, centring it at Oxford and the Plunkett House, Dublin."

On 13 January 1919, Plunkett wrote again, "Founded the Horace Plunkett Foundation with a first endowment of £5,000 and made it the recipient of a provision in my will." So the Plunkett Foundation, or rather the Horace Plunkett Foundation, as it was then known, was formed. But for the first five years of its existence the trustees moved cautiously, partly because they had yet to find a role for the Foundation and partly because the initial endowment was not large enough to employ full-time staff or provide a permanent office. Instead interest on the fund was used carefully to promote courses and studies on co-operative and rural sociology subjects in England and Ireland.

Then, in 1924, the Empire Exhibition was held at Wembley, and the opportunity was taken to prepare a survey of agricultural co-operation in the British Empire and organize a conference of co-operators. The 170 participants of this conference, representatives from most parts of the Empire, found the experience of meeting and comparing notes new and stimulating and so before parting called for a permanent "clearinghouse of information on agricultural co-operation in the English-speaking world" to be established. As a consequence Plunkett more than doubled his original endowment, the Co-operative Reference Library (Plunkett’s private collection, first housed with the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society) was brought over from Dublin, a permanent staff was appointed, and the Plunkett Foundation was moved into No.10 Doughty Street in London.

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