This month marks the end of Caroline Hartnell’s tenure at Alliance magazine, and it brings us great pleasure to highlight her outstanding contributions to WINGS and to the field of philanthropy with a few words from our members and partners.
For the latest annual CIVICUS report on the state of civil society, Avila Kilmurray and Barry Knight (GFCF) bring attention to a new global development industry that “may not be fit for purpose”, calling for a more holistic approach to local challenges. “As the contribution of local people through their own CSOs is downgraded, everyone loses: development aid professionals find it difficult to attain their goals, and local people experience insurmountable obstacles in making any contribution to the wellbeing of their communities.”
Otar Makharashavili (Bolder Giving) reports on a recent webinar cohosted with WINGS, as part of the organization’s Global Givers Initiative, which aims to advance philanthropic giving by promoting donor awareness and action in Southeastern Europe through donor storytelling. “The lack of trust in civil society and the NGO sector in general continues to be the biggest roadblock for groups working on local individual philanthropy promotion.”
Jenny Hodgson (GFCF): “While there are clearly crucial roles to be played by specialized internal and external actors in the immediate aftermath of a disaster, community philanthropy organizations — who are known and trusted in their communities — have a huge part to play.”
As the immediate emergency response gets underway and in the reconstruction that follows, it will be crucial for local needs and voices to be taken into consideration and that grassroots groups are part of efforts to rebuild, strengthen, and expand sustainable development in Nepal’s rural areas.
Following a recent meeting in Beijing, we asked WINGS board members for their thoughts on philanthropy in the Asia-Pacific region. “The implications of wider global developments around wealth generation and the digital era for grantmaking and social investment are challenging to predict for western economies, let alone for the Asian region, currently arguably the most dynamic in the world.”
In this newly unlocked article from Alliance magazine, Jenny Hodgson (GFCF) and Barry Knight (CENTRIS) ask what role community philanthropy can play in development post-2015. Community foundation leaders in North America and Europe weigh in. “The post-2015 goals will apply universally, not just to developing countries, so this discussion is relevant everywhere.”
Chandrika Sahai (PSJP Working Group) draws out lessons from a new resource produced by the Global Fund for Community Foundations that tells the story of a community foundation in the Northeast of India. “The story of the Foundation for Social Transformation India is testament to the difficult conditions in which many grassroots foundations in the global south are established and operate, the adjustments they have to make along the way and how it is their unique capacity to constantly reinvent themselves and keep their ear to the ground that keeps them going.”
Today at the 2014 Fall Conference for Community Foundations, an international research collaboration unveiled the Community Foundation Atlas, the most comprehensive directory of the world’s community foundation movement that has ever been published. The online platform maps the identities, locations, assets, roles and achievements of place-based philanthropies around the world.
We asked the GFCF’s executive director, Jenny Hodgson, to tell us more about the recently-established Global Alliance for Community Philanthropy (GACP), and to share her thoughts on the next 30 years of community philanthropy, and what the Community Foundation Atlas might mean for the movement.
“The fact that the Forum was held in Istanbul was a powerful reminder that foundations are part of civil society rather than standing aloof from it. The notorious decision of the Turkish president to ban tweeting made tweeters of the most Luddite of us, to make clear that we don’t like being banned even from those freedoms that ordinarily we don’t value very much, such as speaking truth to power in 140 characters or fewer.”
In our latest WINGSForum 2014 reaction piece, Ansis Bērziņš of the Community Foundation Movement in Latvia emphasises the role of data in strengthening community identity. “Reliable data is a tool that explains what philanthropy is, what grantmakers do, and how these concepts can contribute to local communities. Data can and does show that we are not alone.”
Jenny Hodgson (GFCF) unveils the recently-established collaborative aimed at advancing the practice of community philanthropy worldwide. “We will be drawing on our experiences of using our grantmaking to develop an evidence base for the global community philanthropy field, drawn from a diversity of circumstances, institutions and contexts. There is certainly a need for some radical new thinking about what the future architecture for civil society funding might look like.”
The world’s first comprehensive atlas of the community foundation movement will provide an unprecedented opportunity for community foundations and community philanthropy organisations worldwide to increase their visibility to a much wider audience including peers, policy makers and potential funders. Organisations can share their work and effectiveness by taking a brief survey.
Ezra Mbogori of the African Grantmakers Network saw PtP as providing an ‘important’ opportunity to free African civil society organizations from sole dependence on external funding and create meaningful, local sources of revenue. Jenny Hodgson of the Global Fund for Community Foundations echoed this observation and agreed that there are important possibilities to use the PtP concept to buttress a number of promising but still struggling community foundations in the South. Article by Lester Salamon.
As the African philanthropy sector enters a period of rapid growth, with new players and new resources emerging, some level of tension and contradiction is inevitable—and healthy—not least because different kinds of philanthropic money come shaped by different visions and theories of change. Article by Jenny Hodgson.
It is with great pleasure and pride that we announce the first winners of the Olga Alexeeva Memorial Prize: Jane Weru and Kingsley Mucheke of the Akiba Mashinani Trust, Kenya.
The last decade has seen profound economic changes, whereby growth has shifted from long established developed countries to the Global South. This kind of structural change is bound to affect all sectors of society, particularly philanthropy and its traditional donor/grantee relations. How do these macroeconomic changes affect different forms of philanthropy, and which new philanthropy…
Using social media in non-profit organisations, foundations and NGOs.
Philanthropy in Focus 