EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The community foundation field in Europe, characterised by its diversity, continues to develop – growing in number but also impact. Based on survey responses from national support organisations, there are 875 community foundations, with a further 29 in development, in 23 countries in Europe.
It is evident that this extraordinary year, marked by the global pandemic, served to highlight the importance of local action and the role that community foundations play as funders, implementers, convenors, and connectors with profound knowledge and understanding of the locality. Despite all adversities, most community foundations demonstrated their agility and quickly became active – adapting their own
work practice in a transformed operating environment; raising and distributing funds; deploying their own staff and resources and co-ordinating volunteers to meet needs; and establishing new relationships and working in different ways with partners. In many places, community foundations established or reinforced
their leadership role at local level. At the same time as urgently addressing needs, community foundations had to find their own new ways of working within their organisation and with their stakeholders – notably communities they support and donors and volunteers that resource that work. Our survey and experience show that
the pandemic tested resilience across the community foundation field, however the impact that resulted from this dynamism and creativity has already served to boost the recognition and credibility of its work. Support organisations played an important role by building and maintaining connections at national level that supported this work; facilitated the sharing of knowledge; and helped raise awareness of this
extraordinary response. This report also reflects on developments with regard to support infrastructure, which itself has developed recently, and in particular in countries where there are no or few community foundations. There are 30 support organisations of a variety of
different forms operating in 25 countries.
Consideration of the work of community foundation support organisations and, in particular, lessons learnt from the experience of responding to Covid-19, will continue to inform ECFI’s work and will contribute to developing the field, consistent with the ethos of ‘building back better’.
