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.
Uniting nations around the SDGs is not easy, but in Cincșor, Romania, we had the opportunity to bring together a group of researchers and practitioners from across the globe to take a deep dive into the relevance of Global Goals at local level and, in particular, to the work of community foundations.
Our starting premise was that the 5 Ps of sustainability: People, Planet, Prosperity, Peace and Partnership are connected at local level by a sixth P – Place. This is the locus where they combine to impact on people’s lives. It is where the SDG rubber hits the road. Community foundations, as place-based philanthropic institutions, are ideally located to understand relevant socio-economic and environmental phenomena, to contextualise them, and to add their understanding and analyses in order to inform their own strategies and practices. The 2030 agenda and SDGs have provided, for some, a helpful framework to connect local to global – for opening and structuring discussions, undertaking analyses, connecting stakeholders, and informing collective thinking and action. The 17 Goals have provided templates for assessment, analysis, strategic and programme planning, and evaluation, and as such have contributed to structuring how knowledge might be acquired and action undertaken in a way that relates to a higher-level agenda, but with a common ‘sustainable development’ purpose.
Community foundations offer an important social, economic and intellectual interface between stakeholders in their locality, including local citizens and organised civil society, donors, businesses, public institutions etc. They can join the dots between their respective needs and capacities and contribute to a collective vision for the future. Knowledge is perhaps the most valuable asset that a community foundation could have. Acquiring and building profound knowledge and understanding of the dynamics of the locality is a continual process – at whatever scale it operates, from neighbourhood to region. Such understanding is informed by research and analyses that can range from listening to people’s lived experiences through to contextualisation of academic or wider / higher level applied or theoretical research.
Evidence from and analyses from research thus enhances their potential to add value to other resources and enriches their role as community facilitators, philanthropy advisers, grant-makers, project implementers, and future builders. Imbuing a research mindset and activating that muscle ensures that community foundations can be a force for change. Empowered by contextualised research community foundations can make the shift from providing sticking plasters and dealing with symptoms to confidently contributing to envisioning and shaping the future of their locality, and to bringing about systemic change at local level. The challenge is finding the appropriate balance between rigour and practicality – and to do what is possible within the financial and technical capacity of the community foundation. This is where mutually beneficial alliances can come to the fore. Even those community foundations reliant on voluntary effort can engage in research. Being inherently competent in convening, listening and sense-making in respect of complex issues, including those without dedicated research (or in some cases any staff), community foundations can seek out the synergy between academic / scientific and practitioner-led approaches. In fact, the very process of having this research mindset and agenda is in itself helpful in any community development process.
The discussions concluded that frameworks and tools are useful and linking global to local makes sense, but even more so when viewed from the bottom up rather than top down (or the other way through the lens). It was recognised however that the ‘common language’ offered in frameworks such as the SDGs to have utility at local level often requires further interpretation and reflection to make it understood and relevant in a local dialect and that the community foundation support infrastructure has a role to play here. It was also evident that place-based philanthropy has a particular need to adopt a research mindset that is capable of contextualising complex and multi-dimensional challenges. Nevertheless, whether from the Americas, Africa, Europe, or Australasia the red thread was around understanding communities and how to be most effective in addressing needs and realising aspirations. So, while multi-lateralism is being challenged, the Cincșor gathering proved that global collaboration between people connected locally and driven by common values is both healthy and productive.
