In June 2010 the Global Fund for Community Foundations (GFCF) launched a study, ‘More than the Poor Cousin? The emergence of community foundations as a new development paradigm‘. The study proposes that:

• Community foundations may be a missing part in the jigsaw of international development, able to reach those most in need while offering local leadership, ownership and accountability.
• Community foundations develop ‘trust’ as one of their main concerns – a vital component in addressing poverty.
• There is a particular value in the role of local money in solving local problems which often gets overlooked.
• Through small grants and building relationships with grassroots organizations, community foundations can play a role in enabling the voices of local people, including the poor, to be heard.

They are now looking to engage a broad cross-section development and philanthropy practitioners in discussion and have established a blog as a way to encourage this.

The report was launched on 1 June at the European Foundation Centre’s Foundations Week in Brussels, Belgium at a session organized by the GFCF. The opening post of the blog provides a summary of the discussion and some of the feedback we received from individuals present at the session. These opening throughts were originally posted on our own Foundation Week blog.

For more information and to join the discussion please visit the GFCF blog http://globalfundcf.wordpress.com/