Anita Vitullo moves on from the GFCF board, WINGS appoints new board members

Anita Vitullo has withdrawn from the board of the GFCF. Anita, who joined the board in 2009, had been participating in the board in her capacity as Deputy Director, Resource Developmentat Welfare Association, a leading Palestinian non-governmental development organization. Anita has since moved on from that position and we thank her for her contributions to GFCF board and wish her all the best for the future.

WINGS (Worldwide Initiative on Grantmaker Support) has announced five new appointments to its board. Among the new board members is GFCF Executive Director, Jenny Hodgson. More details can be found on the WINGS website.

Deputy Director, Resource Development

New grants to two community philanthropy partners in Asia

The GFCF is pleased to announce two new grants in South Asia. Tewa, the Nepal Women's Fund and IPartner's India office have been awarded $12,000 and $10,000 respectively. Tewa will be using its grant to strengthen its grassroots partners competencies in local fundraising and volunteer development and IPartner will partner with local donors and grassroots partners around child trafficking.

Meanwhile, another GFCF grantee partner in India, Nirnaya, has awarded its first set of soft loans to adivasi women's groups in Jharkand state, eastern India.

A full list of our recent grants can be found here.

Lessons from the field: the experience of the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund

As part of our current Youth Civic Engagement programme, the GFCF spoke to Mampe Ntsedi, Programme Specialist at the Nelson Mandela Children's Fund (NMCF)about some of the lessons and experiences from her organization's work which community foundations – perhaps smaller in size, new to youth issues or normally more focused on broader community issues – might also find useful.

The NMCF is a South African grantmaking fund based in Johannesburg. Like many community foundations, the Fund acts as a bridge between philanthropic resources and the many needs of South Africa’s children and youth. It has a diverse funding base, which includes local individual and corporate donors as well as international funders. It is also a grantmaker which has, over the years, adopted an increasingly activist approach in its work, born out of a sense that “charity” will only achieve so much and that real and lasting change will only be achieved by addressing root causes of South Africa’s social problems.

Read the full report from our resource centre

Our new-look home page: plus, TCFN archive shifts to our new user-friendly resource section

It's been a year since we launched our new website and these latest changes to our home page and resource section reflect our desire to be more nimble and responsive to the latest developments in the community foundation / community philanthropy field as well as to build up the knowledge base on this under-documented field in a more organized and accessible way.

You can now comment on or share news items, reports etc. and we've also included our Twitter and Facebook feeds in an attempt to link up the various platforms where the GFCF is active. We are also pleased to annouce the transfer of resources produced by the Transatlantic Community Foundation Network.

From 1999 to 2011 TCFN provided a platform for the exchange of experience and expertise among community foundations on both sides of the Atlantic. It sought to identify good practice and share it with emerging and existing community foundations, as well as to foster the development of this form of philanthropy in counties where the concept is still new. During its existence, a number of working groups were responsible for developing resources that it is believed will continue to be of use to community foundations at different stages of development and in different parts of the world.

The Resources section of the GFCF's website offers selected TCFN resources and related papers on community foundations. A full archive of TCFN resources can be found here and the GFCF resource centre here