In search of a broader vision?

Can over-precise definitions stifle innovation and creativity, asked Shannon Lawder of the Mott Foundation, summing up at the end of the Sixth Networking Meeting of the Community Philanthropy Initiative in Lisbon at the end of May. As Lawder commented, the meeting had confirmed ‘tremendous diversity in the field’ – yet too many emerging community philanthropy organizations still seem to be jumping through hoops simply to prove they really do fit the community foundation model.

Charles Buchanan (Luso-American Foundation), in his opening remarks, almost apologetically reported that attempts to establish community foundations hadn’t been successful in Portugal. What is needed, he said, is to think about community philanthropy more broadly. A good start would be to evaluate what community needs are and what existing organizations are doing – for example, the Misericórdia network, which pursues a wide range of humanitarian and charitable objectives.[1] There may be existing traditions of giving that could have new life breathed into them, suggested Gaynor Humphreys (WINGS).

Humphreys talked at some length about the challenges of establishing community foundations as sustainable, vigorous local organizations in some countries. They have sometimes been set up at least partly because they are a model that foreign donors are comfortable with, she admitted, but they have only really succeeded where foreign money has been used to help develop local resources. She stressed the importance of adopting only what is relevant in a particular national context.

The newest community foundation represented at the meeting must surely have been the Talsi Regional Community Foundation in Latvia, founded in February with the support of the Baltic American Partnership Fund, with CAF Russia providing technical support. The new organization has 47 members (15 business people, 7 NGOs, 8 local government representatives, 17 ‘socially active’ people), each of whom must contribute an annual membership fee of 20 lats (€32) and bring in one new member. Seventy-five per cent of the money collected will go to the grants programme and 25 per cent towards an endowment. Members will vote on project proposals that have been approved by the board according to formal criteria.

The strengths of the Talsi model are that it creates local ownership (it is hoped that 1 per cent of the target community of 62,000 will be directly involved within five years), fosters individual giving and provides a sustainable income. Whether it is helpful to regard it as exemplifying the same model as a US community foundation with a large endowment is at least open to question. United Way Hungary provides another example of very successful fostering of individual giving in a country where NGOs do not mostly see this as a viable strategy.[2]

Questions about the relative importance of form and structure arose, too, from a session looking at the role of associations of foundations. Why establish an association? Looking specifically at community foundations, Nicolaus Turner from the German Association of Foundations argued that an association helps ‘keep the field clean’ by establishing quite strict and exacting criteria for membership – an approach that clearly prioritizes form (ie structure or model) over process (ie efforts to promote community philanthropy). Discussion of how to establish an association focused mainly on the setting of criteria – in the Slovak case, for example, the criteria include an obligation to work towards building an endowment.

Disappointingly, the meeting focused little attention on the ‘Search for a New Vision’ of the meeting title. If the vision is to see community philanthropy organizations springing up everywhere, those promoting community philanthropy may need to look beyond the tight definitional embrace of the community foundation. 

1 Santa Casa da Misericórdia de Lisboa was founded in 1498 with the personal involvement of Queen D Leonor. Its creation was part of a new health and social policy, which typically involved the construction of hospitals.

2 The December issue of Alliance will include an article looking at the United Way model of community philanthropy, taking UW Hungary as a case study.

EVENT Community Philanthropy Initiative Sixth Networking Meeting
Date 30-31 May
Venue Lisbon
Theme In Search of a New Vision

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