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Case study – Community controlled grantmaking at the Dalia Association
I had served at the Dalia Association for about four months when we organized a women’s community evaluation meeting to discuss the last round of the women supporting women programme, our largest grantmaking programme. I …
Case study – Never mind control, think about impact
The 2016 UN World Humanitarian Summit demonstrated a groundswell of voices with a clear message: that power is too far away from the people, and from the local and national first responders who are best …
Where the horizontal meets the vertical
From 1997 to 2010, Kenya enjoyed a significant share of foreign aid with many organizations depending entirely on it for their operation. Following the recession and the subsequent reclassification of Kenya as a low- to …
Latin American community philanthropy in the vanguard
In Democracy in America Alexis de Tocqueville remarked on ‘the general equality of conditions’ in the United States. He didn’t travel to Latin America. If he had, he would have seen a very different picture: …
New developments in community philanthropy emerge in Italy
Between 2000 and 2006, the first group of Italian community foundations was established in Northern Italy. A lot has been written about the model of community foundation promoted by Fondazione Cariplo and some other enlightened …
Using the power of philanthropy in the public interest in Kenya
Kenya, like the rest of Africa, is not overpopulated. It is just over-concentrated and deeply inequitable. At the same time, it is home to innovation, young industry, a growing internal consumer market and a middle …
Community philanthropy’s ‘burning issues’
Supporting environmental activists in Mexico who face a climate of violence and insecurity. Exploring the use of shared spaces in Northern Ireland to address disadvantage and division, particularly across religious affiliation. Equipping and encouraging youth …
It begins and ends with trust
If you want community philanthropy to work, you have to start with trust. Yet many of the elements in funders’ relationship with grantees – evaluations and reporting requirements – are based on scepticism. They have …
Finding ways to make ‘community’ mean more than ‘us’
New forms of community philanthropy have joined older, more traditional ones in the Central and Eastern Europe region following the democratization of the 1990s. However, the emphasis of community remains on ‘us’ and very often …
From communities to constituencies for human rights
As a human rights advocate I am grieved by our limited success in building strong and active human rights constituencies even in places where promoting human rights is not dangerous. Indeed, we have yet to …