By MAGGIE JARUZEL POTTER
Jenny Hodgson, director of the Global Fund for Community Foundations (GFCF) and Avila Kilmurray, a GFCF board member and also director of the Community Foundation for Northern Ireland, sat down for an interview with Communications Officer Maggie Jaruzel Potter during a recent visit to Mott’s home office in Flint, Michigan. This is an edited version of their discussion about GFCF’s work and the community foundation field more broadly. [To read a related article further describing GFCF’s day-to-day operations, along with the activities of the organizations it funds around the world, click
here
.]
MJP (Maggie Jaruzel Potter): Can you describe the strengths of the GFCF’s new and independent board? AK (Avila Kilmurray): The first strength is the geographic spread. We have a board member from Nepal, a board member from the Middle East, board members from North America, Europe and from Africa. That mix is important because it enables an exchange of views based on very different contexts and sensitivity to those contexts. I’m reminded that the board member from Nepal said, “Look, we might only have electricity for four hours a day, so please remember that.”
Avila Kilmurray |
On this board, there is also diversity in terms of identity and presence – gender, race or different perspectives, just like there needs to be on community foundation boards. In our case in Northern Ireland, our board is half Catholic and half Protestant. Depending on the divisions within societies, community foundations need to reflect those divisions.
JH (Jenny Hodgson): We have been quite keen to get voices from the regions that we serve. One of the challenges for the institution itself is to get that kind of big vision. But to get that kind of leadership, you need to feed it with multiple voices. We need people who lead organizations in the contexts that we serve and who see the potential and the challenges for this kind of work.
MJP: While the community foundation concept is the same around the globe, the context in which these foundations operate is very different. Would you each discuss this? JH: Context is crucial in understanding how community foundations work. In Central and Eastern Europe we have seen the emergence of community/social responsibility in a context where civil society is often weak. If you look at places like Russia, a community foundation there has the capacity and the ability to serve as a vehicle which can both stimulate and nurture the emergence of the civil society and NGO (non-governmental organizations) sector. It can act as an intermediary on behalf of corporates and other sectors.
We are seeing an emergence of foundations dealing with assets that become available, whether it is a mine or a community tourism project or a wind farm – anything that involves the community coming into possession of an asset which needs stewardship. The challenge is to create ownership and encourage participation around it. It needs to be a thoughtful and responsible investment that is made in a meaningful way.
In these cases, part of the earnings from the investment would go toward the creation of a foundation. The challenge is in communities where literacy levels are very low. How do you create a sense of ownership and put systems and structures in place allowing people to see a community foundation as an asset that can enable them, particularly in poor communities when you know people live on a hand-to-mouth basis? For them, the idea of setting up a long-term institution is quite different than when a mine is there and giving everyone some money, which they spend immediately. This requires a shift in thinking.
Jenny Hodgson |
AK: At the Global Fund we are seeing that certain corporates, through their short-term investments like the extractive/mining industries, feel the need to fulfill that role of corporate social responsibility. They have the intent but not necessarily the vehicle or the structure to do it.
The community foundation can act in that bridging role between those who actually want to do something and making sure that what they do is done in a way that the community can have some influence over it. Then, the corporate is actually working with the community so there is a much more organic development. That’s important.
We have also seen situations in more developed community foundations where a corporate sets up a philanthropic grantmaking fund within the community foundation. This brings the best of both worlds because the corporate can still grant funds to whatever organizations they want, but the community foundation makes the transfer of funds and brings the knowledge in terms of what the community needs.
MJP: The GFCF learns early on about which countries are exploring the community foundation concept, so who are the newcomers to the field?
JH: Kazakhstan has a community foundation now, thanks to help from the Eurasia Foundation and the Philip Morris tobacco company, and the field is developing in Southeast Asia right now. There are different countries in Latin America, and in places like South Africa where you are seeing a maturing and diversification of the field.
There are two community foundations in Egypt and one in Palestine – all very different from each other. They are emerging out of very specific contexts. We have had 17 applications from Ukraine, but they are coming from a different angle. This isn’t starting out from nothing. There, it is NGOs morphing into community foundation-type entities. It is community philanthropy organizations still working around the same kind of core agenda.
MJP: Mott funds the development of the community foundation field through its Civil Society program. How do community foundations help develop a strong civil society sector and also strengthen democracy? AK: They are critical for that. Community foundations’ value is around recognizing that people have a right to be active citizens so it is not just a dependency sort of mold, and recognizing that there is only so much that any society can expect of its political structures and its private sector.
It is important to see a community foundation as more than just money. Equally as important as the money is the knowledge. The foundation can act as a knowledge hub and a vehicle for learning.
There is that third sector where ideas could be explored. It’s a space where you can address the wicked issues – those issues that nobody can really solve, or that are very painful for politics to address. At community foundations they can actually be explored in an inter-sectoral sort of way. That is where civil society is most powerful. Community foundations are not the only ones, but they certainly play a major part in enabling that to happen – both in terms of their grantmaking and also by the discussions they host. They can highlight some of those issues, problems and opportunities by helping to set an agenda that goes beyond the established political/private sector agenda.