Candid has launched the Community Philanthropy Directory, a free database that maps the global field of community philanthropy. Candid hopes that the directory, which was launched in December, will raise the visibility of community philanthropy organisations and facilitate new relationships among practitioners looking to connect with and learn from their peers around the world.

The Community Philanthropy Directory lists more than 2,000 community philanthropy organisations, and catalogues basic information such as funding interests, missions, and focus areas. According to Candid, the information available on the directory was collected and verified through a two-year long process with input and data from around the world.

Through the database, Candid hopes to address a number of questions including, ‘How can we call attention to organizations working to shift power to local communities? How can we provide up-to-date information on who’s doing what, where, in community philanthropy? How can we facilitate learning from and among community philanthropy organizations?’ according to Candid’s Global Partnerships Research Manager Inga Ingulfsen in a blog post.

Though the database indexes the global community philanthropy field, reviewing it shows that much of community philanthropy’s financial assets are concentrated in the U.S. and U.K.

‘It is more important than ever to highlight work that focuses on shifting power to local communities,’ Ingulfsen wrote in her post. ‘The global spread of Covid-19 has made the deep structural problems, inefficiencies, and inequalities of the philanthropic sector impossible to ignore and spurred renewed calls for shifting decision-making power to communities most affected by the pandemic.’