Founding Stewardship

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A time-limited way for places to help establish shared digital infrastructure for towns and places.
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Learn how it works
  • Overview

What is founding stewardship?

Founding stewardship is a way for a small number of early places to help establish the YourTown platform and shape how it is governed, prioritised, and sustained.

  • It is not sponsorship.
  • It is not procurement.
  • It is not a one-off project.

Instead, it is a shared commitment to building long-term digital infrastructure that places can rely on, adapt, and improve together.

Founding Stewards contribute early so the platform can be established properly, with shared standards, shared ownership, and a model that works beyond pilots and grants.

  • Why it exists

Most digital platforms for places struggle for the same reasons.

  • They are built as projects, not infrastructure.
  • They rely on short-term funding.
  • They are owned by vendors, not communities.
  • They stop evolving once the initial build is finished.

YourTown is designed differently. Founding Stewardship exists to make that difference real from the start, by aligning funding, governance, and accountability with long-term use, not short-term delivery.

  • What it enables

Contributions are pooled to establish the foundations of the platform.

This includes:
  • A stable, shared platform baseline that all places can rely on
  • Core governance, standards, and decision-making processes
  • Shared development of priority features and improvements
  • Ongoing maintenance, performance, and security
  • The ability to learn from multiple places at once and improve faster

The result is infrastructure that improves over time, rather than resetting with each new project.

  • How it works

Deliberately structured to be clear, bounded, and low risk.

  • It runs for a fixed, time-limited period
  • Contributions are shared across participating places
  • Decisions are guided by a clear stewardship framework
  • The ability to learn from multiple places at once and improve faster

This structure allows places to participate early, help shape the platform, and then decide what comes next with evidence, not assumptions. These activities are delivered once, centrally, for the benefit of all participating places.

  • Who it’s for

Designed for places that:

  • Want shared digital infrastructure, not one-off websites
  • Value long-term sustainability over short-term launches
  • Are comfortable collaborating with other places
  • Want a clearer alternative to vendor-owned platforms

It may not be suitable for places looking for a fully bespoke build, a quick rebrand, or a short-term pilot with no ongoing commitment.

  • Funding & Assurance​

Designed to be viable as revenue spend and does not rely on grant funding to function.

Where grants are used, they are additive, to accelerate inclusion, onboarding, or specific enhancements, not to keep the platform alive – If the stewardship period ends, places are not left stranded.

  • There is no dependency cliff.
  • No platform withdrawal.
  • No forced upgrade path.

That assurance is central to the model.

  • Time limited

This is about getting the foundations right, not scaling prematurely.

Founding Stewardship is not open-ended. Only a limited number of places can take part, and once the founding phase is complete, this route will close. Future participation will look different, based on what has been proven to work. 

  • Next steps

Request the Founding Stewardship pack

It only takes 1-2 minutes and does not commit you to anything. It simply opens a more detailed, informed conversation.
  • FAQs

If you’re still wondering...

No. Founding Stewardship is a 12-month, time-limited phase. There is no automatic renewal and no obligation to continue beyond the founding period. Each place makes a fresh decision at the end of the 12 months.

This is intended to be treated as revenue spend, aligned to shared services, digital, regeneration, or place-based budgets. It is not capital expenditure and does not create a long-term asset or liability.

There is no lock-in. If the founding phase does not reach sufficient scale to continue, the programme does not proceed. Local platforms, data, and content remain under local control, and any local improvements already made are retained.

No. While an initial delivery partner is involved because a working platform already exists, the founding phase explicitly establishes the conditions for multiple delivery partners. The model is not dependent on any single supplier.

By the end of the founding period, the shared platform foundations are in place, including governance, stewardship, and a hardened shared core. In most cases, places will also have tangible improvements applied to their existing website through the use of shared components.

Grant-funded projects typically fund one-off delivery. Founding Stewardship contributions fund ongoing stewardship, governance, and sustainability, ensuring the platform continues to operate and improve rather than ending when delivery funding stops.