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.
As of today, the community foundation manages over 100 funds, among flow-through and endowment ones, named and thematic funds but also unrestricted ones. (Here you can find our short video guide on the different features of these funds).
Since its inception it has been engaging and collaborating with individuals, corporates, other foundations but also institutional players (like the national Government or the European Union) to direct resources at the local level, playing a key role in balancing donors’ interests and community needs. Thanks to the credibility gained during its almost 50 years journey, CFNI has been able to set thematic funds and specific campaigns that build on community insights, focusing also on topics that are most neglected, and sense of urgency. A recent example being the Equity in Action Fund, born in response to the 2024 riots and onward to support of grassroots organisations in building stronger, safer, and more informed communities.
Orla Black, Director of Grants and Fund Development at Community Foundation Northern Ireland, sketched the community foundation’s journey in the opening meeting of ECFI Fund Development Learning Journey. Here below some key insights and learnings arisen from the conversation.
Donor care and leveraging existing relationships should be a priority
Approx. 80% of financial resources will come from relationships already in place. Donor care is not “after the grant” work, rather it is a major engine of sustainability and a launchpad for new campaigns.
Community foundations should make sure to nurture these relationships, to continue to invite people to invest in new opportunities and build relationships that last, as they will be among your most powerful allies. Treat stewardship capacity as revenue capacity, with clear ownership and targets: do not leave it as “nice to have”. This means also building the technical capacity and processes, e.g. reviewing the pipeline regularly, adopting CRM systems aligned with your objectives.
The community foundation can take up different roles and has the capacity to influence donor behaviour
CFNI manages money on behalf of foundations and other trusts; it works as an intermediary, channelling resources based on individual donors’ interest or on Thematic funds that the organisation deems relevant; it helps corporates to develop plans, guidance and criteria for the cause they want to support and manage them on their behalf.
Community foundations can also play a market-shaping role: improving funding practice beyond their own walls. Donors might arrive with rigid, business-like demands (e.g., heavy documentation for small grants): that is when the community foundation can play a key influencing role, advocating for more aligned practices such as proportionate due diligence, flexibility, and trust.
Strategy should prioritise the “how” over the “what”
A strong strategic stance that emerged during the conversation is that contexts change fast (Covid is the big example, or the riots in the country most recently), so grantmaking strategies should focus on operating principles and ways of working, like agility, flexibility, relational practice, risk taking, more than fixed thematic priorities.
A clear values-led “how we do things” becomes the guardrail for choosing donors, designing funds, and staying adaptive.
Saying “no” protects mission and operational integrity
Refusing resources (or directing them elsewhere) might seem a missed opportunity, especially in the early stage of a community foundation; instead, it can be an operational safeguard and identity signal, making clear what are the underlying operating principles and values of the organisation. One example given in the context of CFNI was the proposal of the Government to establish a large fund designed to deliver many tiny grants (i.e., ~£2,000) with heavy bureaucracy and not much willingness to adapt. The community foundation rejected it, even though it was “a big win” financially, as it did not align with its grantmaking strategy and approach.
Match funding and campaigns are powerful strategic leverages
Match funding entails the capacity of the community foundation to multiply the resources collected for a specific goal: they can be powerful assets to incentivise donors’ engagement and conversion. Specific campaigns may arise from current or anticipated community needs: the community foundation can convene, listen, then build thematic vehicles that donors can buy into.
Be accountable to donors but also to the community itself
This insight set out clearly in CFNI’s grantmaking strategy, where it outlines key commitments, for instance in terms of length and difficulty of the grant requests and reporting process, the ways to interact and have clear dialogues, the ability to adapt to emerging needs. Designing clear grantmaking principles is fundamental in terms of fairness, to protect the community foundation’s reputation, and need to be made also clear to donors. In general, CFNI aims for a minimum ~55% approval rate and reports it to the board quarterly. Aligning to this approach, by way of example, it refused a corporate request to extend deadlines just to increase application volume (thereby raising donor profile), because low success rate wastes community time, and their own time and erodes trust.
A look at the the future
When asked to look at the future, Orla Black outlined a practical agenda for CFNI with some key elements:
- Keep what is working (campaigns, disciplined pipeline management)
- Explore innovation like giving circles (e.g., Circle of Change) able to democratise philanthropy and widen the community involved despite resource intensity
- Address donor demographic risk: current donors skew older, so CFNI needs entry points for younger donors.
- Think like a business based on relations rather than transactions, identifying value added in donor service, leverage or campaign objective
