Community foundations will be central to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a leading philanthropy infrastructure body has claimed. That’s the view of the US Council on Foundations in a new report launched at the North American Community Foundation summit in Mexico City on 5 and 6 February.

‘While the SDGs represent a global agenda, they require local action to achieve them,’ says Council on Foundations President Vikki Spruill in a foreword to the report, Local Leadership, Global Impact, launched earlier this week.

According to the report, community foundations are already strong on one key ingredient: their ‘unmatched convening power’. However, community foundations first need to work out how and which of the 17 different goals apply to their local circumstances.

The report sets out a ten-step process for them to benefit from, and to help meet, the SDGs, including building partnerships, innovating, co-creating and monitoring.

As well as an exhortation to community philanthropy, the report offers an analysis of how community foundations are already applying the Global Goals to their work featuring case studies from the Canada, Brazil and Poland as well as the US.

For more from the Summit, see https://nacfsummit.com/