About the Plunkett Foundation

The Plunkett Foundation is an educational charity, based in the UK near Oxford, which supports the development of rural group enterprise world-wide. With 80 years’ practical experience to draw on, we advocate and support economic self-help as a means of enabling rural communities to meet their changing needs.

As the UK’s leading information resource on rural group enterprise development, we have continuously supported the growth and evolution of farmer-controlled business. Today, our wide involvement in everything from policy formation and research to consultancy and training enables us to help more and more rural communities.

To solve the challenges which face them – such as social exclusion and deprivation – we work with a range of public and private sector partners to set up social enterprises such as local food initiatives, community-owned village shops and community transport schemes.

The result is more self-help solutions, and more rural groups establishing and running enterprises that provide them with essential services. In the process, more rural economies are stimulated, more jobs and training opportunities are created – and English rural life can flourish as we wish it to.