Lessons form an exchange: Austria – Romania

This exchange involved the Austrian cohort of initiative groups and members of the board and staff team of Verband für gemeinnütziges Stiften (VgS) and the Association for the Practice of Transformation (APT) and three Romanian community foundations. The goal was to learn from successful community foundation practitioners how to start and operate a new community foundation and experience their impact. Gaining knowledge first hand about the organisational concept, impact, and daily business of community foundations, has helped accelerate the community foundation field development process in Austria.

Lessons learned, observations and insights

The programme was shaped for initiative groups in Austria at the very beginning of their journey. We learned that many Romanian community foundations started with an incredible spirit of innovation and entrepreneurship and began with modest financial resources and experience. Despite legal and demographic differences and different overall donation volumes in the counties, the starting situation seems to be very similar. CEOs and teams from the community foundations in Sibiu, Țara Făgărașului and Brasov explained their beginnings and developments, the ways to find funding for their projects as well as their grantmaking schemes. Hearing about the beginnings, achievements and lessons learned was very helpful and inspiring for Austrian ‘initiative groups’ who were encouraged to start gathering a group, and not let the aim for perfection hold them back.

The study visit had a very practical impact on different levels

1. Shaping the Austrian community foundation programme. Starting with a field study conducted by the NPO Institute at Vienna University of Economics and business and an intense stakeholder analysis, we had to find the best community foundation model to fit into the very lively Austrian civil society. Learning about the Romanian support organisation approach to the development of the national movement is an important part on the way to form the Austrian model, for the board and management who are responsible for implementing the strategy.
2. Capacity Building Programme. Verband für gemeinnütziges Stiften launched it’s first Capacity Building programme in 2022. The study visit was part of this programme. While we had not only theoretical input but also best practice presentation, face-to-face meetings and experiencing organisations and protagonists in their natural sphere of influence helps enormously in understanding the nature, role and impact of a community foundation, the context of its role as a grant maker. We understand the study visit as the Capacity Building programme’s most important step from theoretical input to understanding – ownership – realisation. The relationships with our Romanian colleagues and the lessons learned helped us – in addition to other learning experiences and the evaluation of the first round – to create the Capacity Building programme for the 2nd cohort. CF Fagaras’ Founder Stefan Cibian will design and teach a “listen to the Community tool” with cohort 2, to be applied in small and new initiatives. We do hope to hear best practice from community foundations as well as to learn about strategic and practical approaches at support organisation level.
3. The Community Foundation Initiative. Experiencing the people behind a community foundation, learning about their personal development from very different professions and educational backgrounds carriers, truly encouraged the Austrian initiators to go out to walk the talk. Being encouraged by experienced community foundation activists accelerated the initiatives next steps on developing their concepts, organisational structure, and functions atives next steps on developing their concepts, organisational structure, and functions of their future community foundation. The visit was a significant call to action.
4. Peer-learning and networking. The return visit, framed as a workshop, gave us the unique chance to connect the European community foundation movement, represented by Alina Porumb as an outstanding representative, with potential new participants for the 2nd Capacity Building cohort and advisory board members. The study visit thus had an impact not only on the first cohort, but also on the upcoming second cohort of the capacity building programme. By knowing each other’s organisations and contexts, VgS as a CFSO, the first cohort of community foundation initiatives groups and possible initiative groups from the second cohort are fortunate to benefit even more from APT and Inspire Change’s materials and online trainings or the Thinkfracture conference on an ongoing basis. Relationships between Romanian Community Foundations and Austrian initiative will be maintained in various forums, from ECFI thematic meetings and Climate Crisis Learning journey alumni group to Inspire webinars and other European exchange forums.