Over five years, Boyarka Community Foundation has evolved from a local grant-maker into vital community infrastructure, adapting its role through the pandemic and Russia’s full-scale invasion. Its experience shows how community foundations can sustain local initiatives, trust and wellbeing even amid profound uncertainty. Above all, it makes the case for long-term investment in locally rooted organisations as partners in the resilience and future of Ukrainian communities.
Community foundations are explicitly mentioned for the first time in an official Italian Government policy document as part of philanthropic fabric - specifically as a structural and enabling components of the social economy. Furthermore, the Italian National Action Plan for the Social Economy repeatedly emphasises the territorial dimension of the social economy thus reiterating the role of community foundations as connectors between a national policy framework and the realities of individual places. It provides Assifero and its community foundation members an opportunity to convert policy into practice.
The Spanish community foundation movement, international representatives of community foundations, funders, partners & universities gathered together for AEF's annual conference. What emerged was much more than the annual gathering of Spain’s community foundation movement. It became a moment to take stock of how far the movement has come and, perhaps more importantly, where it is heading.
What do we know about the philanthropic funding flowing into rural communities? How do the levels of funding and how the money is used compare with urban contexts? How might a better understanding of these aspects support more focused efforts to boost rural philanthropy? These are the questions being asked by a new Rural Philanthropy project recently launched in the UK. Its approach and early findings offer valuable insights for anyone interested in rural philanthropy and the role community foundations can play in supporting rural communities across Europe.
One year after its launch, Tiago Pereira, CEO of Fundação Mendes Gonçalves (Portugal), reflects on regeneration, collaboration and the power of place-based philanthropy to foster equitable and thriving futures for local communities.
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.
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.
In this article, Elena De Carandini, President of Raimat Lleida Community Foundation, shares the community foundation's role in setting up, convening and lead a participatory initiative, Lleida Alimenta, a territorial agrifood movement strengthening community resilience.
Officina Badoni offers a compelling example of how a community foundation can redefine impact investing by transforming a disused industrial landmark into an open, collaborative civic hub. The Fondazione Comunitaria del Lecchese chose to invest a quarter of its endowment not for financial return, but to regenerate a shared space where young people, organisations and citizens can work, connect and imagine new futures together. Through a co-design process involving local actors, the building has become a platform for social innovation rather than a real-estate project, already fostering new partnerships, daily community use and a shift in how the Foundation relates to its territory. Ultimately, Officina Badoni shows how investing in places can strengthen community life, turning an “asset question” into a “community question” where the real value lies in people and relationships.
