By MAGGIE JARUZEL POTTER
- Community foundations in South Africa often use a holistic approach in their grantmaking, addressing multiple, inter-connected issues simultaneously, such as education, employment and health care.
- In South Africa, community foundations are demonstrating that they have the potential to offer locally funded alternatives to typical, externally funded non-governmental organizations (NGO).
This article is part of an occasional series about the community foundation field and the Mott Foundation’s role in supporting and strengthening it. The series reports on what is occurring in Mott’s major geographic focus areas — Central/Eastern Europe and Russia, South Africa, and the U.S. — as well as providing information about how the field is expanding globally. Mott’s goal is to inform the public about the latest trends in the community foundation field in advance of its 100th anniversary year in 2014.
In South Africa, community foundation leaders intentionally focus on creating positive local change from the bottom up, initiated by citizens, instead of the top down, initiated by elected officials, say those in the field.
“If we believe in the community foundation movement, and I do, we need to get down to the ground level and talk with the people living there and hear how they are affected by our community’s problems,” said Beulah Fredericks, executive director of the Community Development Foundation Western Cape (CDF WCape), based in Cape Town, South Africa.
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Interview with Greg Erasmus, trustee for Social Change Assistance Trust
Video courtesy of eTV
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“We need to hear their voices and what their aspirations are. We should be asking: ‘What do you want to change? Where do you want your life to go?’”
Frederick’s passion to see positive changes in her country, and in the condition of residents’ daily lives, is played out in the Western Cape province, the second wealthiest of the nation’s nine provinces.
Initially, that economic fact alone made it difficult for some South Africans to understand why Fredericks was exploring developing a community foundation there, she says.
However, as the longtime leader of a respected NGO that operated a preschool center and provided early childhood services in the region, she had witnessed the growing gap between the province’s rich and poor. She also saw firsthand the interconnectedness between social issues such as inadequate systems for health care, housing, education, and water and sanitation.
For Fredericks, the preschool center served as the entry point for addressing many community needs. It also led her NGO to create its “Families in Focus” program, which evolved into the CDF WCape.
The CDF WCape, formally established in 2007, is seen as a field leader in the country, the continent and globally. Later this year, CDF WCape staff plans to travel to Cairo to participate in discussions about community philanthropy, which will be hosted by the Arab Foundations Forum, says Jenny Hodgson. She is executive director of the Global Fund for Community Foundations (GFCF), based in Johannesburg. [See related article.]
Like CDF WCape, many community foundations that are in varying stages of development in several African nations and elsewhere, are created in response to local needs, Hodgson says.
These newer foundations, she says, are able to bring a holistic approach to their grantmaking, which means addressing multiple, inter-connected issues simultaneously, such as education, employment and health care. Hence, community foundations like the CDF WCape have the potential both to serve as stewards of the community’s resources and, in the long term, to offer locally funded alternatives to typical, externally funded NGOs.
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 “Education gives you power. It opens doors and gives you opportunities. Without an education, you can’t become the farm owner, only the field worker.”
— Beulah Fredericks, executive director of the Community Development Foundation Western Cape
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“Before, people in a community would be told: ‘We’ve got money for water; where do you want your pump?’” Hodgson said. “Instead of assuming they all need pumps, community foundations are asking: ‘What do you see as your most urgent need? What assets do you have? How can we help you meet this need?’”
Currently, there are five community foundations in South Africa — seven if two newer affiliates of the CDF WCape are included — Westlake Community Foundation and Delft Community Foundation, an embryonic organization. 1 Some community foundations in the country receive the bulk of their grantmaking money from businesses and corporations. Others depend on wealthy private donors.
Although the number of community foundations is small for a country with a population of approximately 49 million people, there are other types of community grantmaking institutions that provide funds to empower citizens so they can determine their own priorities and implement their own projects.
Examples of these types of philanthropic organizations include two longtime Mott Foundation grantees.
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The Ikhala Trust provides small grants to rural organizations that support community gardens as a source of family income.
Photo courtesy of Ikhala Trust
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The first, the Ikhala Trust, is a micro-fund for NGOs operating in the Eastern Cape. Its staff says it uses the principle that “the only way to make a meaningful difference in the lives of the poor and marginalized is to have them involved as major stakeholders because they best understand their needs and challenges and can ultimately offer solutions ....”
The second is the Social Change Assistance Trust, a Cape Town-based grantmaker that partners with NGOs in rural communities to help improve the quality of life for residents through democratic decisionmaking processes.
In 2010, the Mott Foundation helped create, and continues to support, a multiyear development project to strengthen civil society organizations in South Africa, including community foundations and similar institutions. Among other things, Mott’s Technical Support and Dialogue Platform provides assistance in strategic planning, technology effectiveness, and monitoring and evaluation. The project also developed a Web site specifically intended to facilitate peer learning among participants.
Fredericks says the project has been educational, especially in helping organizations focus more intently on the impact of their work instead of “just dishing out money.”
For the CDF WCape, this purposeful grantmaking meant not providing a one-time scholarship when a group of low-income vineyard workers said they wanted better education for their children. Instead, Fredericks put out a challenge: If they could pool funds to establish an annual academic scholarship for a child from their community to attend classes beyond secondary school, then the community foundations would provide a match — rand for rand — for all money raised. The field workers’ goal, Fredericks says, is to provide a path for their children to work on farms if they so choose — but as owners, not as field hands.
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A snapshot taken by youths in the PhotoSpeak program shows the region's inadequate sanitary conditions.
Photo courtesy of Community Development Foundation Western Cape
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Another successful CDF WCape initiative is PhotoSpeak, which makes the nation’s Bill of Rights come alive for youth. After learning about citizens’ legal rights, the youth travel throughout their community snapping photographs that illustrate how residents’ basic human rights are — or are not — being protected.
In its third year, PhotoSpeak started as an idea Fredericks expressed years ago when she visited the Golden Gate Community Center in Phoenix, Arizona (a grantee of the Arizona Community Foundation).
Today, PhotoSpeak has piqued the interest of community foundations elsewhere. In response, GFCF in April 2012 hosted a Webinar on the topic, which was received enthusiastically by participants from many countries. Fredericks and the director of the Phoenix center discussed how photography can provide meaningful community involvement for young people.
In addition to sharing its experiences globally, CDF WCape works with another community foundation to address the province’s pressing issues because the Western Cape’s challenges are huge, Fredericks says. Her staff linked with staff at the West Coast Community Foundation and divided the province in hopes of addressing problems strategically. When it makes sense to do so, they work together.
Building partnerships with others, whether organizations or individuals, is crucial to a community foundation’s success, Fredericks says. In the organization’s early years of transition, she visited community foundations in the U.S. and Canada, but most of what she learned about the field came from site visits on her own continent — to the Community Foundation for the Western Region of Zimbabwe and the Kenya Community Development Foundation.
However, most of what Fredericks has learned about the challenges facing fellow South Africans comes from personal experience, she says. It has come from her circumstances while growing up, and also from her current role and the one she held at the predecessor organization.
Fredericks insists the busy schedule she keeps at CDF WCape is not burdensome, nor does she view it as a job.
“It’s more than a conviction. It’s something much deeper. It’s where my passion lies,” she said. “I’m a colored woman 2 who grew up during the apartheid era. My childhood wasn’t easy, but I learned that education instills hope.”
She paused, then completed her thought.
“Education gives you power. It opens doors and gives you opportunities. Without an education, you can’t become the farm owner, only the field worker.”
1 The others are the Uthungulu, Greater Rustenburg, West Coast and eThekwini community foundations. The latter was previously called the Greater Durban Community Foundation.
2 Although there are no longer legal race classifications, South Africans routinely describe themselves as white, black or colored, a mixture of two or more ethnic backgrounds.