Commissioned by Comic Relief, the Global Fund for Community Foundations (GCFC) released a new report that highlights the current scope of community philanthropy. Co-authors of this report, titled ‘New Horizons for Community-Led Development: Recommendations for Funders’, include Jenny Hodgson (GCFC Executive Director), Barry Knight (CENTRIS Executive Director and adviser to the GCFC), and Susan Wilkinson-Maposa (community philanthropy adviser in Cape Town).

From the executive summary, ‘This report summarises key findings from an extensive scoping exercise undertaken by the Global Fund for Community Foundations (GFCF) aimed at understanding the current landscape of strategies and approaches that put local people and local institutions in charge of their own development.’ The study draws information from two sources: a literature review and a series of interviews.

Jenny Hodgson explains some of the main takeaways from the study, ‘Underpinning this report is the suggestion that not only are donors and other organizations of ‘big aid’ increasingly concerned about issues of civil society resourcing, effectiveness and legitimacy over the long‐term, but that there is growing evidence of new thinking, practice and thought leadership that supports the vision of a new, more grounded, locally‐rooted but globally‐connected system, or architecture, for community‐led development.’

For more, read the full report here.