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.
James Magowan
Senior Advisor
ECFI
This report provides an overview of the community foundation field in Europe in 2026, highlighting its growth, diversity and the pressures it faces. Using a futures thinking lens, it explores how community foundations respond to present challenges, draw on past legacies, and shape more resilient and inclusive local futures.
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.
The Community Foundation Northern Ireland (CFNI) fund development has shifted from “fundraising as a separate function” to “fund development embedded in grantmaking intelligence.” This means that the same people who understand community needs, applications, and grant logistics are also the ones stewarding existing donors and pitching new opportunities, making the proposition more credible, more agile, and easier to deliver.
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.
This report outlines the highlights and the main lessons learned on youth participation and involvement by Mirafiori Community Foundation (Italy) and Local Community Development Foundation, Štip (North Macedonia) within the ECFI P2P Exchange program.
Kathrin Dombrowski
Coordinating Director
ECFI
With an eventful, exciting but also challenging year coming to an end, it’s a good moment to reflect on what this year has asked of the community foundation field, and of ECFI, which exists to support it. In a context of growing pressure on civil society and community foundations, our work this year has been shaped by listening closely, hosting moments of connection and responding alongside our partners. This reflection brings together some of the key themes that emerged from that shared experience.
James Magowan
Senior Advisor
ECFI
Re-thinking approaches to community foundation movement building in the Balkans presents the synthesis of a multi-country action research initiative led by ECFI and partner support organisations in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, North Macedonia, and Serbia. The report examines how community foundations are developing under conditions of political pressure, donor dependency, and shrinking civic space. Using the 4Cs framework—capacity, capability, credibility, and connections—it identifies key paradoxes of fragility and resilience, and offers strategic recommendations for consolidating existing foundations, strengthening support organisations, and building a sustainable, trust-based regional movement.
The Re-think National Research Reports – Annex complements the Balkan Re-think synthesis by providing detailed country-level analyses from Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, North Macedonia, and Serbia. Drawing on interviews, desk research, and practitioner insights, the annex explores how community foundations and support organisations navigate fragile civic environments, donor dependency, and limited capacity. It captures national specificities while reinforcing shared patterns around trust-building, local legitimacy, and the critical role of long-term support in transforming emerging initiatives into sustainable community-based institutions.
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.
Kathrin Dombrowski
Coordinating Director
ECFI
Systems at all levels of scale, whether at a national, regional, local, community, or personal level can tip (to a changed state / social norm) and community foundations can help trigger positive local social tipping points. With their knowledge of the local context and dynamics, and their ability to invest in bridging social capital, they are well placed to help build the trust required to adopt and cultivate a positive narrative around agency and change, rather than trying to push transformation prematurely or in a top-down manner. Importantly their understanding of the locality enables them to appreciate a diversity of opinions, concerns and impacts, such that they can work towards locally relevant ‘just transition’. A Positive Tipping Points Toolkit is suggested as a useful way to explore and identify how small, well-placed actions can trigger large, self-reinforcing positive change.
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.
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.
From 27th to 29th October 2025, ECFI brought together 55 people from across Europe, mostly under 35 years old, for the second edition of the ECFI Youth Fest, hosted by the Fondazione di Comunità San Gennaro in Naples, in collaboration with Assifero. This report sums up the insights and ideas emerged.
James Magowan
Senior Advisor
ECFI
In October 2025, the European Community Foundation Initiative (ECFI) brought together community foundation leaders from across Europe for a Resilience Deep Dive in San Sebastiano da Po, Italy. Over three days, participants explored what resilience means for communities, for organisations, and for themselves as individuals. At a time when democratic resilience is being tested across Europe, and its fault lines are increasingly visible at the local level, the conversations quickly moved beyond theory, drawing on lived experience, peer learning, and honest
exchange. Reflections that follow capture the overarching themes and shared insights that emerged.
ECFI, in collaboration with Article Org (AGO), hosted a second conversation on the topic of succession planning, exploring the recent experience of the Agrigento and Trapani Community Foundation. The Foundation’s former Director, Giuseppe La Rocca, stepped down, passing the baton to Viviana Rizzuto. The purpose of the meeting was to shed light on key elements and principles of a succession leadership strategy in the context of community foundations.
James Magowan
Senior Advisor
ECFI
This brief sums up the insights from the online discussion, that ECFI hosted, about the distinctive role of CFSOs and CFs in advocacy. The conversation has been framed around three interconnected dimensions of advocacy: visibility; operating environment and addressing issues/topics.
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.
The 2025 Spanish Community Foundations Meeting in Madrid brought together foundations, universities, support organisations and international guests to exchange ideas, strengthen networks and celebrate impact. Over two days of dialogue, reflection and workshops, participants reaffirmed the growing movement in Spain, highlighted the power of collective intelligence, and welcomed the launch of the country’s tenth community foundation —the first in Madrid, the Hortaleza Filanda Community Foundation.
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.
Last June, ECFI hosted an interactive webinar to explore how community foundations and community foundation support organisations
are beginning to experiment with and integrate AI into their work. This short report summarises the topics discussed and shares
insights from across the community foundation field.
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.
Róisín Wood
CEO Community Foundation for Northern Ireland
The Community Foundation for Northern Ireland has a long history of fostering hope and reconciliation. Now, faced with incidents of hate-motivated violence in their community, their 'Equity in Action' initiative is tackling disinformation, hate and social division head-on. Róisín Wood, CEO of the community foundation, shares in this article their vital long-term and rapid interventions.
The ECFI Study Visit 2025, hosted by the Roots & Wings Foundation, took place in Hungary, bringing together 20 delegates from across Europe. The visit’s core objective was to facilitate deep learning from the Hungarian community foundations’ context and foster peer-to-peer exchange, enabling participants to gain practical insights and actionable ideas for their own organisations and national context.
Among the topics explored throughout the four days were: how to encourage civic participation, foster solidarity, promote youth engagement, implement new fund development techniques, succession planning and leadership renewal within the organisation.
Kathrin Dombrowski
Coordinating Director
ECFI
ECFI joined Stiftungstag 2025, one of the biggest gathering of philanthropy practitioners across Germany and beyond. In this piece, Kathrin Dombrowski, Coordinating Director at ECFI, shares her insights from the event and highlights some key discussion points from the ECFI panel on the role of community foundations in contributing to "social tipping points" on climate.
James Magowan
Senior Advisor
ECFI
In this piece, James Magowan, Senior Advisor at ECFI, shares his reflections and main takeaways from the global gathering, organised by Fagaras Research Institute, focused on bringing to the forefront concrete local initiatives of community foundations that contribute to sustainable development and community engagement.
European Community Foundation Initiative
Over 100 leaders from community foundations support organisations (CFSOs) representing 34 countries across four continents gathered in Bucharest, convened by Inspire, to reflect and exchange on the present and possible future roles for CFSOs. Here, we share some of the insights gathered by the ECFI team.
European Community Foundation Initiative
Our next destination of our Interail mini-series is Portugal. Discover how community foundations are emerging and how the Portuguese Foundation Centre is supporting the development of the movement.
Participation is not just a method; it is a culture shift. Below is a summary of the approach and lessons of the implementation of a participatory approach implemented by Two Ridings Community Foundation (UK). Key insights are that not only was the financial asset utilised effectively in order to address persistent social challenges, but there were also valuable outcomes in relation to inclusion, building social capital, stronger (more resilient systems), meaningful relationships, and overall, a healthier civic culture.
Giacomo Pinaffo
Secretary General Fondazione di Comunità di Messina
In this piece, Giacomo reflects on discussions emerged at the Philea ‘Futures Philanthropy Gathering of Leaders’ in Tunisia, highlighting the need for building bridges within the philanthropy ecosystem to align issue and interest with local dynamics and realise more systemic and durable impact.
Assifero, ECFI, Iac Berlin, Philea
PEX, a network of philanthropy infrastructure organisations, transitions to a new collective governance model stewarded by Assifero (Italy), ECFI (Europe), iac Berlin (Germany), INSPIRE (Romania) and Philea (Europe). The newly minted PEX Collective aims to practice new paradigms in philanthropy and unlock the collective potential and agency within the philanthropy infrastructure community.
Ride with us through France, our next destination of our Interail mini-series. Discover here how the community foundations were born there, the challenges they face – starting from their name – and how Fondation de Lille and other organisations are supporting the development of the field.
In this blog Lydia Bökelmann from Halle Community Foundation, Germany, reflects on the experience and lessons from their Youth Participation project.
It set out to test various ways of connecting with
and involving young people. Having explored how to find and connect with young people, the next step was to turn ideas into reality. Lydia concludes
‘Ultimately, it’s about empowering them to navigate these systems and take meaningful action in shaping their community’.
Viktoriia Zablotska
Fundraising consultant & Partnership manager
Despite the ongoing war, Ukrainian community foundations continue to play a crucial role in supporting local populations, adapting to new
challenges, and fostering resilience. Viktoriia Zablotska from the National Network of Local Philanthropy Development shares insights into their efforts, highlighting the experiences of three foundations operating under extreme conditions.
Second stop of our Interrail series: Slovakia. Discover the origin of its community foundations movement, their features, tracks covered in the past and future stations ahead.
The first stop of our Interrail: Italy. A quick overview of the Italian community foundations movement, the different way they works, tracks covered in the past and future stations ahead.
In this interview, Francesca Mereta, ECFI, explores the origins and aspirations of La Nou Community Foundation with Eva González Vargas, Secretary General. Located in a rural area with the lowest population density in Europe, La Nou Community Foundation focuses on addressing the eco-social crisis, and in particular its impact on young people, through creating opportunities for a fulfilling life in the locality.
Jersey is one of the Channel Islands and a British Crown Dependency, with its own parliament, government and laws. Established in 2020, Jersey Community Foundation is the newest edition to the UK Community Foundations network. From launching the foundation during the pandemic to tackling critical issues like climate change and the cost of living to supporting migrants, Anna Terry, CEO of Jersey Community Foundation, provides a glimpse into the challenges and aspirations of a uniquenisland-based foundation.
Anja Böllhoff
Strategic Advisor
ECFI
Anja Böllhoff has served as ECFI’s Co-Coordinating Director for nine years. At the end of 2024, she passed the baton to Kathrin Dombrowski. In this piece, Anja shares her reflections as she looks back on ECFI’s journey over the years.
In the midst of chaos following the devastating flash flood in Valencia the Horta Sud Community Foundation offered a beacon of hope. Fortunately, because of its particularly close working relationship with the Association of Spanish Foundations it was able to count on essential technical and financial support, as well as reach to experience from across Europe, that helped it deal with emergency and the aftermath of the catastrophe. Here Valentina Ferrara, coordinator of the Spanish Association’s community foundation programme, reflects on the action taken by both organisations, drawing lessons for others.
Anja Böllhoff
Strategic Advisor
ECFI
This practical guide for community foundations will help them understand their responsibilities and actions they can take in relation to keeping children and vulnerable adults safe. With safeguarding being a ‘must do’ and not a ‘nice to have’, this is an essential resource.
Stefan Cibian, Director of Făgăraș Research Institute in Romania, shares a powerful recount and insights from the ECFI Study Visit 2024 that started with visits in Leeds or Two Ridings Community Foundations and ended up at UKCF’s 2024 Conference, that brought together community foundation practitioners from the UK with more than 40 international participants.
Kathrin Dombrowski
Coordinating Director
ECFI
This 90-minute webinar titled "How Philanthropy For Climate Can Propel Climate Action in Community Foundations" was jointly hosted by Philea and ECFI. Aimed at community foundations across Europe - particularly those yet to sign an existing Climate Commitment but interested in strategically framing their climate action - the event attracted around 30 participants. Attendees primarily represented community
foundations and their support organizations, along with other types of organizations.
A study visit delegation of 12 delegates from North Macedonia had a recent excellent learning experience in Romania. Led by Konekt, the support organisation for the community foundation movement in North Macedonia, representatives from 5 local action hubs (LAHs) and their leadership groups had the chance to be inspired by the Romanian experience in development of community foundations and to transfer the knowledge acquired in their own communities. Irina Hadji Mitova, Project Manager, Konekt, summarises what participants took away from their time in Romania.
In this report, Francesca Mereta, Communications and Peer Learning Expert at ECFI, shares the insights and the key takeaways emerged at" It's all about You(th)", the two-day event organised by ECFI in collaboration with Streekfonds East Flanders and with the support of the King Baudouin Foundation.
KoneKtor 2024, the annual gathering of funders working on or interested in issues in Central and Eastern Europe, took place in Prague on the 23rd-25th of September. Given the vital role that community foundations and national movements play in fostering cohesion in different Central and Eastern European countries, ECFI could not miss the opportunity to bring the broader field perspective to the discussion, along with on-the-ground colleagues.
The Novarese Community Foundation has embraced fund development by thinking long term and by getting out into the territory. Here, Gianluca Vacchini, describes their approach of asset building through generating knowledge and trust. This has resulted in over 100 active funds, and importantly created the opportunity for attracting the ‘unexpected’ donor.
