Mott has a long legacy of supporting community development by promoting community foundations as local leaders of positive change. As global problems grow more complex and affect people’s day-to-day lives, we want to ensure community foundations worldwide are equipped to lead their communities in finding and sharing solutions.

Through our Enhancing Community Philanthropy program area, Mott will continue to build momentum and excitement for community philanthropy by helping the field grow and mature. Our work will concentrate on encouraging expansion to new regions and on strengthening existing community foundations. Further, we will support field-wide efforts to adopt the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals as a framework for developing community-level solutions to global challenges.

Our grantmaking in the Community Philanthropy program area is organized under two objectives:

Expansion and Development

We are working to expand and strengthen the community foundation field in Africa, Europe and Latin America.

We make grants to:

• Regional and national support organizations that provide technical assistance for creating new and strengthening existing community foundations in targeted countries and regions.
• Organizations building the community foundation field through research, learning materials and/or platforms for sharing ideas and collaboration.

Effectiveness and Leadership

We are helping community foundations advance progress toward achieving the Sustainable Development Goals at the local level.

We make grants to:

• Organizations and programs that help community foundations understand and use the SDGs to address local challenges.
• Collaborative community foundation initiatives that seek to address the SDGs.