Development funding is already starting to diminish or to become more directly associated with countries’ commercial interestsLocal philanthropic sectors are emerging in many parts of the world that were traditionally considered purely “aid recipient” countries, as Zoe Gudovic has pointed out about Serbia. As Linda To writes in her piece about Hong Kong, in many countries a growing middle class has its own disposable income and an appetite for giving to social causes through organized and participatory platforms.
Raising money locally can be hard work, as Jenny Barry and Okeoma Ibe have discussed about Mexico and Nigeria, respectively. It’s far easier, of course, to submit a proposal to an eager external donor who shares your goals, and, let’s not deny it, your jargon.
Local funding is a crucial and sadly overlooked part of a larger strategy for getting people to learn and care about your cause.But local funding is not just about the money. But there is already a powerful body of evidence and practice from a growing set of institutions in the global South including community foundations, community philanthropy organizations, women’s funds and other types of local grassroots grantmakers that offers some important insights into the debate.
The truth is that there is no better time for those concerned about development approaches that build local constituencies and local supporters to listen more closely to the voices quiet, passionate, credible and deeply-rooted of the emerging global field of community philanthropy.
In recent years, local institutions of community philanthropy around the world from Zimbabwe to Romania, from Uruguay to China have begun to develop a collective voice and to demand attention as an essential, but often missing piece, not just of civil society architecture but also of healthy, inclusive communities.
Most importantly of all, this small but growing field, which emphasizes multi-stakeholder governance and local asset development, and local philanthropy as key to constituency building, has a particular relevance for civil society sectors more generally in the context of shrinking spaces for civil society, the criminalization of activism and the overall reduction of resources in many parts of the world.
Over the past ten years, the Global Fund for Community Foundations has built up a network of over 160 community philanthropy organizations in more than 60 countries: while each organization might look different depending on where they are based, what unites them are some core beliefs around how development will be stronger and more lasting when local people see themselves as co-investors and participants. And yes, it turns out that when a funding base is made up of lots of different of contributions from local individuals, companies and foundations as well as international sources and when an organization is embedded in a community, it is able to address certain issues that outsiders might not receive well.
Community foundations in Central and Eastern Europe, for example, have started to engage around issues affecting the Roma and, even more recently, around refugees from Syria, in ways that wouldn’t be possible if they hadn’t been there working across a range of other local issues for many years.
