Alliance magazine

If you did, you still have a chance to catch up. The EFC has published highlights and photos from many sessions on its website while our Latest from Alliance blog highlights a wide range of different perspectives on the conference.

We typically ask conference bloggers to report on ‘any aspect of the event that they find particularly interesting or surprising’ – and it’s always interesting to see what they do choose to write about. This year we have:

•    Star blogger Maite Garcia-Lechner of the European Cultural Foundation, who blogged extensively on engaging with social media, the value of philanthropic investment in community development, and the power of storytelling.
•    Terry Odendahl of Global Greengrants Fund reporting on the Impact Island team’s session ‘Sea Change or Hard to See Change?  Are Foundations Making Enough of a Difference?’ where Terry seems to have had fun ‘finding out how we really do our work, by analysing the ‘”Do Good Foundation on the Island of Trouble”’ – though it has to be said that the headdresses were not up to standard this year.
•    While Filiz Bikmen looked at recipes for building successful networks through ‘searching for the masterchef’.
•    The conference title was ‘Rethinking Europe’ and the European project was the focus for Jenny Hodgson of the Global Fund for Community Foundations, Chandrika Sahai of the Peace and Social Justice Philanthropy Network, and Maribel Königer of ERSTE Stiftung.
•    Inevitably Ukraine was never far from the discussion. There was a session devoted to foundations’ role in Ukraine specifically as well as a more general one on foundations in conflict situations, and Ukraine was a big focus for the session on women’s role post conflict, both reported on by Caroline Hartnell of Alliance. See also an interview with Madeleine Rees of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom and Caroline’s post celebrating the EFC’s first woman chair – 25 years on and about time!
•    Finally, a view from the other side of the Atlantic, from Andrew Ho of the Council on Foundations, who reflects on the challenges to successful public-philanthropic partnerships, which seem to him more complex in Europe than in the US.

Sadly we did not in the end feature any blogs from the enthusiastic Mozaik Foundation team of five who had agreed to blog for us – for the very good reason that, in addition to hosting the conference, they were totally taken up with initiating projects for the relief of the suffering of the victims of Bosnia’s devastating floods. For more information and to make a donation, see here>

Alliance will be posting blogs from the Philanthropy Exchange, the Council on Foundations 2014 conference, throughout the week. See initial posts from Chet Tchozewski and Peter Laugharn.