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Boris Tsirulnikov is director of the Togliatti Community Foundation, which has received Mott support in the past. Located in Russia, Togliatti shares a Sister City partnership with Flint, Michigan, Mott’s home community. Tsirulnikov recently visited Flint and shared his thoughts on the development of Russian community foundations with Mott Communications Officer Maggie I. Jaruzel.

Mott: What factors do you credit for the rapid growth of community foundations in Russia?  

Boris Tsirulnikov (BT): There is a saying in Russia, "We saddle up slowly but once we are on, we ride fast." People

Boris Tsirulnikov

were looking at various vehicles for community development and this looked like a good approach that was acceptable to the population. During the past year in some of the leading places of fast economic development, there has been a lot of interest in community foundations.  

We have gotten away from propagating general phrases like, "We are going to make life better for you." Instead, we try to address those issues that really worry residents.  

Mott: What single thing would you want people to know about community foundations in Russia?   

BT: I want people to understand that no community foundation alone can solve people’s problems. I would like people to come to the foundation and be prepared to help with foundation work. I want them to be involved and donate as individuals. I want them to feel that this foundation is not somebody else’s, but it belongs to the people in the community.

The Soviet legacy leaves people thinking, "Somebody should do something for you. Somebody should build this for me and somebody should do that." The basic task of the foundation is to give people the understanding that the development of the place where they live can best be done by them.

Mott: In addition to being grantmakers, what is the role of community foundations?

BT: We bring groups together. When we advertise a grant competition, we build into the process the opportunity for various organizations—municipalities and NGO groups—to come together. If we have a grant announcement about the development of a sports program, we include neighborhood committees. One of their grant conditions is that they must work with schools and some NGOs or a nonprofit agency, which can give additional leverage.

Then we say they need to host some events so many people will participate in the process, including some from local government. Using this kind of system throughout the grantmaking process, we develop a lot of local leadership.

We also have a competition for the Philanthropist of the Year, which we have been doing for seven years. There are several foundations in the area so we unite those who have an understanding of what philanthropy is with businesses who can get better educated on the subject and learn that philanthropy is not just paying off the local government. Today, for winning this title, someone is given a prize that costs about 10 percent of a normal business dinner. But because a person’s position in the community is so important, people really do compete for this prize. I see this as an element of community development.

Mott: You traveled to Michigan with a group of young people. Would you describe the Togliatti Community Foundation’s youth program?

“There is a saying in Russia, “We saddle up slowly but once we are on, we ride fast.”

BT: We brought young people from Russia to the States to participate in community foundation youth advisory councils. Last year, young people from Berks County [PA] came and visited us and we had a very interactive exchange of ideas.

In Russia, we created a system of youth banks. These groups don’t just teach young people about philanthropy. They also try to get them engaged in solving social problems, and monitoring and evaluating various grant projects. The young people have their own expert committee and they get a grant budget of about $20,000 per year. Then they decide how that money gets distributed. They operate quite independently. While this is not a big pool of funds, it is substantial.

Mott: There seems to be a great desire for Russians to earmark donations for specific projects instead of giving money that is not designated. How do you educate people about the need for undesignated donations?

BT: There is a big problem with that because a lot of our businesses think they know best how the money should be spent. We try to include business representatives in our grant committees and then we take them out to visit a variety of projects. That way, they can see that when we have undesignated money, we choose to support things that are effective but that might go beyond their specific area of interest. This is something that has a big impact on businesses because we show that their money is leveraged, meaning that other funds come into the foundation because of their donations.

One of our greatest achievements has been success in building our endowment because a large portion of our projects are funded with the interest generated from the endowment. Today, people might hear President Putin say, "We should support sports programs." Tomorrow, he will say, "We should support culture." The community shouldn’t only have sports or culture. There should be as many programs as a community can "eat." Why should a large business and local government build skating rinks and pools that nobody uses?

We fund many projects that people say they need, and we do it with interest from the endowment, which today is about $1 million. It has grown from about $1,500. When we started in 1998, we took in and gave away about $6,000 a year. Today, we have about $1 million in revenue annually from local businesses so that is quite a huge growth in eight years.

Mott: You spoke a lot about businesses making donations, but what steps, if any, are you taking to encourage individuals to give?

BT: We are actually moving in two directions. First, we have taken the program used by United Ways, which is workplace giving. Last year we raised about $3,000, but that was the first year. We hope to raise $10,000 this year. Now, we have three businesses involved and we hope to get two more by the end of the year. Secondly, we are helping to create family funds.

Back when the Togliatti Community Foundation was being created, there were a lot of charitable organizations in Russia. Many of them were created for a specific interest, whether it was a business interest or a political interest. Therefore, we didn’t call this a charitable foundation; we called it a community foundation. That gave us the opportunity to explain to the community that the philanthropy we were engaging in wasn’t just simply giving for some special kind of interest or some short-term need. We wanted people to know it would help develop the community. It was to be more of a development strategy and it is working out that way.

Additional Resource

Click here to read a related article about the Berks County (Pennsylvania) Community Foundation’s Youth Advisory Committee's visit to Russia to share their experiences with young people from Togliatti’s Youth Bank.