Would it be possible to start a community foundation? That was the question two colleagues and I asked ourselves in early 2009.  We believed that a new organization along the lines of a community foundation might best help to address the greatest need we faced in our daily work i.e. the lack of independent grant money which did not come with strings attached – whether it was local government interference or else corporate interests.  What was really missing from the local picture was independent sources funding, which could support exploratory or unconventional activities or which address ‘uncomfortable’ issues and where decisions are taken by people with experience and knowledge rather than by state bureaucrats or corporate managers.

Romania has a growing movement of community foundations: there are currently eight active foundations and interest from another three communities. So how does a conference which brings together over a thousand community foundation practitioners from across the United States look from the eyes of a practitioner from Romania? Are there common themes when we look at the development of community foundations in the U.S. and in other parts of the world or are we actually talking about completely different realities?

Alina Porumb, Association for Community Relations

The first part of this article covers some of the key topics of the conference, as I saw them through participation in plenaries and some specific topics which I followed in the concurrent sessions. With limited experience of the U.S. community foundations field, I can only claim a sort of ‘tourist’ approach to my understanding on that side and more in depth understanding of community foundations in Romania and, more broadly, in Central and Eastern Europe.

OK, so I’m sounding like a stuffy old curmudgeon pining away for some mythical good ole days.  But I still do have serious questions about how “new” some hot trendy things in philanthropy really are (e.g. venture philanthropy, collective impact, scaling, even community leadership) or whether it’s just things people have been doing for quite a while but were calling them something else, or not calling them anything at all but still doing.  The proverbial “old wine in new bottles.”

As a community developer, I believe deeply in the power of community-led, asset-based development.  I’m privileged to work with the Nebraska Community Foundation, a statewide community development organization using philanthropy as a tool to build our hometowns from the bottom-up, focusing on mobilizing local assets to shape a more prosperous future.  During the past fifteen years I’ve had the opportunity to visit and work with many community foundations throughout the United States and internationally.  It’s not unusual to discover that community foundations, especially U.S.-based community foundations, are focused on donor development and assets under management to the detriment of community building and sustainability, and therefore aren’t achieving the community change they espouse. 

The Value of Community Philanthropy argues that increasing local ownership and accountability leads to stronger communities and should be a main focus of development aid practitioners. The report sets out the results of a consultation (conducted by the Mott Foundation and the Aga Khan Foundation USA, in association with the Global Fund for Community Foundations),  to explore ways to stimulate and develop community philanthropy as a way of strengthening civil society and enhancing aid effectiveness.  Its formal launch at an event hosted by the Aspen Institute in Washington D.C. earlier in the month was attended by donors and development practitioners, and generated a positive buzz on the social media airwaves. 

The report was written by Barry Knight, Executive Director of CENTRIS and adviser to the GFCF. Barry is also co-author of another new report, The New Generation of Community Foundations, just released by the GFCF and the Coady International Institute, which explores the emerging community foundation phenomenon in the context of other forms of “social solidarity” institutions and movements, and also as a response to disillusionment with conventional channels of international aid.

The collaboration between the GFCF and Coady emerged out of chance encounter at a workshop in South Africa in 2009. During a brief conversation during a coffee break, Gord Cunningham (then acting director at Coady) and I discovered that, although we were coming from slightly different angles we shared a common interest in community-driven development and, in particular, the role of local assets.

Two years since the earthquake and it seems that for many the time feels about right to start thinking about new models and approaches for Haiti: the gear change from the immediate humanitarian relief effort to long-term development is well established and the limitations of the current development effort seem all too apparent.