In Raimat, a small rural community in Lleida with a deep agricultural legacy, culture has become a powerful tool for transformation. When Raimat Lleida Community Foundation was established in 2022, its aim was to connect legacy, land, and community to generate real positive impact. Since then, the Raimat Arts Festival has become the cultural project that best embodies this vision.
The second meeting of our ECFI Fund Development Learning Journey focused its attention on legacy funds - wills and bequests - and what community foundations can do to make them a strategic asset in their development. This report summarises the insights, lessons learned, and experiences emerged during the conversation.
Silvia Mayrhofer
Project Manager Community Foundations in Austria
For several years, the Association for Charitable Foundations (Verband für gemeinnütziges Stiften - VgS), Austria’s national CFSO, supported by the Mott Foundation, has been running a support programme for community foundation initiatives. The Community Foundation Mühlviertel, the first foundation to emerge from this programme, is now beginning its operational work.
Sport can be a powerful catalyst for individual and local development, and an effective lever for addressing complex community challenges. Across Europe, community foundations are investing in sport and sporting facilities as a strategy for strengthen individuals’ agency, particularly among young people, while fostering community building, and participation.
Kathrin Dombrowski & James Magowan
ECFI
Community foundation support organisations (CFSOs) are sometimes described as the scaffolding of our field - the structures that hold networks together and help movements grow. But during this year’s CFSO gathering in Vienna on 24–25 November, another metaphor felt far more fitting: CFSOs as the plumbing of the philanthropy ecosystem. Not the most glamorous image, perhaps. But stay with us. Read Kathrin Dombroski and James Magowan collective insights that emerged during the ECFI 2025 CFSOs meeting.
In 2019, Community Foundation Wales initiated a community consultation process to better understand the needs of its grantees. The results were strikingly consistent: the main concern was short-term, project-related funding, which prevented them from focusing on and delivering their mission. The foundation responded swiftly by reviewing its funding strategy to include support for core costs and for multi-year funding. In this interview, Andrea Powell, Director of Programmes (and Deputy Chief Executive), shares the organisation’s journey, the challenges it has faced, and the opportunities ahead.
In July representatives from Local Action Hubs (prospective community foundations) from North Macedonia, along with the support organisation, Association Konekt, took part in a study visit to Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. They engaged with the Trag Foundation, foundation leaders, community members, and local stakeholders to learn from diverse models of grassroots action explored how community foundations are driving local development, fostering civic engagement, and cultivating a culture of philanthropy. Below Nikola
Trajkovski, Programme Associate, Association Konekt reflects on a deeply emotional, intellectual and transformative experience.
Kathrin Dombrowski
Coordinating Director
ECFI
The European Forum Alpbach is a unique place where reflection meets action. It brings together young people alongside leaders from politics, business, civil society, and science to shape ideas for a stronger democratic Europe. At this year’s forum, Kathrin Dombrowski, Coordinating Director at ECFI, contributed the perspective of community foundations. In this article, she shares her key takeaways from a two-day workshop exploring how philanthropy can embrace system change approaches.
James Magowan
Senior Advisor
ECFI
This opinion piece in Spanish argues that place-based philanthropy offers a powerful pathway to systemic change by grounding action in local realities. Community foundations, deeply embedded in their territories, combine long-term commitment, local knowledge, and relationship-building to address complex challenges holistically. Moving beyond crisis response, they act as connectors, facilitators, and catalysts of social transformation. The article highlights their unique capacity to build trust, strengthen social fabric, and reconfigure systems by working across sectors and mobilising diverse forms of capital at the local level.
James Magowan
Senior Advisor
ECFI
Place-based philanthropy offers a powerful approach to tackling complex local issues and driving systems change. Rather than relying on distant policies, real change may begin within communities themselves. Community foundations, rooted locally, are well-positioned to lead this transformation. This piece was first published on Philea’s website in June 2025.
