The Global Fund for Community Foundations have released the new report What is community philanthropy? – A guide to understanding and applying community philanthropy.

According to the author, Dana R.H. Doan, ‘There is limited guidance for those who wish to apply or invest in community philanthropy approaches. This paper provides an overview of an extensive review of the available literature and seeks to clarify, for those that may be working in the field of development, what it means to practice community philanthropy.’

Dana elaborated further in her blog post Am I practicing community philanthropy? ‘I wanted to know if it would be possible to come up with a clear definition of community philanthropy. Such clarity, might support individuals that aspire to operate or sustain community philanthropy organizations. At the same time, a definition might help to ensure that scholars and practitioners are talking about and evaluating the same thing.’

‘So, I dove into the literature to see what I could find. Are there certain organizational forms that foster community philanthropy better than others? How do community philanthropy organization’s ensure that their efforts leverage local resources and lift up local people in the development process? Do community philanthropy organizations have similar goals and objectives? If so, how do they measure those goals? It was my hope that, by digging into the existing literature on community philanthropy, the answers to some of my outstanding questions would become clear.’

Read the full report here: globalfundcommunityfoundations.org

Alliance magazine is currently reporting from this year’s UK Community Foundations annual conference in Glasgow, Scotland. For more insights on the community philanthropy, you can read all all the coverage here.