The Mott Foundation has a long legacy of supporting community philanthropy. Our funding for community foundations — place-based philanthropic organizations — started with a grant to the Flint Public Trust in 1950. Sponsoring community foundations outside of Flint began in earnest in 1979.

Early on, the focus was on strengthening the community foundation field in the United States. Community foundations were viewed as community-oriented vehicles for local giving that were durable and sustainable.

The work expanded globally in 1988, when Mott joined forces with the Charities Aid Foundation to fund the growth and development of community foundations in the United Kingdom. Within two years, the Charities Aid Foundation and Mott launched a highly successful £1 million challenge grant program to help U.K. community foundations build endowments to ensure their long-term sustainability.

Building from this early catalytic support, community foundations in the U.K. continue to drive positive change in their communities today. Collectively, U.K. community foundations awarded 32,500 grants, totaling £184 million, in 2024 alone.

After the start of Mott’s Civil Society grantmaking program in 1992, support for community foundations expanded further afield. Grantmaking efforts extended to Central and Eastern Europe in the wake of communism’s collapse, as well as to South Africa after the fall of apartheid. In these rapidly evolving parts of the world, Mott helped to establish community foundations as grassroots leaders of positive change during democratic transition. The program also went on to focus on developing the field globally and in selected countries, such as in Mexico.

Of these countries and regions, Mott’s most notable experience was in supporting community foundation development in Central and Eastern Europe, which spanned 30 years. Mott’s earliest successful experience came in the form of direct support to the first community foundation established in the region and in continental Europe as a whole. The Healthy City Community Foundation in Banska Bystrica, Slovakia, was established in 1994 and received general purposes grants from Mott from 1995-2004 totaling $305,000. Mott’s support was instrumental in helping the Slovak community foundation to become a strong organization, still thriving to this day.

In nearby Romania, the community foundation movement has proved to be one of the most successful in Central and Eastern Europe to date. Experts believe it succeeded because of the local rootedness of Romanian community foundations and their leaders, enabling them, first and foremost, to build deep trust in a post-communist environment. These leaders engaged residents and companies to mobilize resources in a flexible, responsive manner — all the while linking into a national support structure. Today, Romania’s almost two dozen community foundations serve as an inspiration and resource for other countries around the world.

Another place where community philanthropy has grown considerably over the past 30 years is in Mexico. Community foundations did not exist in Mexico until the 1990s, but now they can be found in half of Mexico’s states. Mexico has the largest number of community foundations in Latin America and the Caribbean. The first community foundations in Mexico were formally established in Cozumel and Oaxaca in 1996.

As the community philanthropy movement grew in Mexico, community foundations created an affinity group with the Mexican Center for Philanthropy (Centro Mexicano para la Filantropía) in 2001. In 2011, community foundations formed their own umbrella organization, called Comunalia, with support from the Inter-American, Kellogg and Mott foundations. Comunalia serves as a community foundation support organization, currently working with 17 community foundations in 16 of Mexico’s 32 states. Comunalia focuses on strengthening the operations and leadership of these individual place-based foundations, while also fostering relationships and synergies across organizations.

In Kenya, the Kenya Community Development Foundation was founded in 1997 to build sustainable, community-driven development. Like Comunalia, KCDF provides capacity-building support to new, emerging community foundations in the country. Mott grants to KCDF enable it to work alongside small place-based organizations, like Dhamira Moja, to help them grow and transition into full-fledged community foundations.

Based in Western Kenya along the coast of Lake Victoria, Dhamira Moja’s impact has already left an indelible mark in the community. It led efforts to provide critical aid in the wake of catastrophic flooding in Kenya in 2024. The organization partnered with multiple Rotary Clubs, UNICEF, the Kenya Red Cross and local government authorities to distribute food and other essential assistance to over 2,000 flood victims who were displaced and living in camps across the county where Dhamira Moja works.

Between 2019 and 2025, the Civil Society program focused on expanding the community foundation field in select countries in Africa — such as Kenya, where Dhamira Moja works — as well as in Europe and Latin America. This work has involved grants to regional and national support organizations, such as KCDF in Kenya and Comunalia in Mexico, which in turn provide technical assistance and financial support to new, burgeoning community foundations, while also strengthening existing ones. Through the end of 2025, 160 new community foundations, along with 18 new community foundation support organizations, had been created in 16 countries in Africa, Latin America and Europe.

In all this work across continents, the Mott Foundation has used three main strategies to build and strengthen the community foundation field. First, we’ve focused on making grants to membership and support organizations. Second, we’ve supported fellowship programs for international leaders in the field. And, third, we’ve helped to build global networking opportunities for community foundations.

Most recently, Mott has helped community foundations understand and use the United Nations’ sustainable development goals as a way to address local challenges through a shared worldwide framework.

As global problems grow more complex and affect people’s day-to-day lives, Mott wants to ensure community foundations in Africa, Latin America and the United States are equipped to lead their communities in finding and sharing solutions. This includes addressing polarization and other looming divides, which are threatening to tear apart the already frayed social fabric of the United States and other parts of the world. Partnering with community foundations to build common ground in their communities harkens back to Civil Society’s early days of civic engagement in parts of the world where trust was limited after communism and apartheid. In this way, building common ground is a logical extension of Mott’s past as we look to the future.