Deadline: Rolling (open year-round)
They provide small grants aimed at stimulating and support the development of community philanthropy organizations around the world. Beyond the financial aspect, grantmaking also serves as a way to build relationships with individual organizations, learn about and support their work and to help connect them into the growing global community philanthropy movement.
In their grantmaking, we try to strike a balance between consolidating relationships with longer-term grant partners and continuing to add new organizations into our network. Their annual grantmaking depends to a large extent on the resources we have been able to mobilize from donors. They do not hold an open call for applications every year, but eligible organizations are welcome to submit inquiries throughout the year.
Grant size and duration
- Grants are normally in the range of U.S. $7,000 – $20,000 (size will depend on annual budget, nature of activities and whether the organization is already known to the GFCF).
- Grants are normally for an initial period of one year (follow-on funding may be possible).
- Participation in a learning network / grantee convening may be a condition of the grant.
Eligibility
Is your organization:
- A community philanthropy organization?
- A community foundation?
- A women’s fund?
- An environmental fund?
- A national public foundation?
- A grassroots grantmaker?
- Any other kind of organization that identifies with the concept and practice of community philanthropy?
Are you interested in:
- Shifting power and control closer to communities so that people have greater say – and the opportunity to act – when it comes to driving their own development?
- Recognizing, valuing, growing local assets and resources as a central pillar of community-owned and community-led development?
- Piloting and demonstrating new approaches – whether around governance, decision-making, local resource mobilization – that build local agency and foster new kinds of participation and ownership?
Does your organization:
- Serve a particular community, whether geographic, issue or identity-based, and see it as a source of knowledge, assets, relationships and agency?
- Use grantmaking as a deliberate development strategy, which devolves power and resources to groups and organizations your community, because you believe that the best decisions and actions are rooted in and shaped by local experience and knowledge?
- Work to build a local culture of giving (philanthropy) and co-investment within the community you serve, whether as a strategy for flattening power, growing a local support base or constituency for community issues, increasing civic participation and horizontal accountability?
- Seek to build trust, networks and connections within, across and beyond the community/ies you serve?
- Seek to address, engage in, build support for complex, unpopular or minority issues within your community?
Are you based in:
- Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Central and Eastern Europe, or Latin America and the Caribbean? (Please note, priority is given to those countries where access to other funding opportunities is limited. Applications from community philanthropy organizations representing disadvantaged communities in the Global North will also be considered on a case-by-case basis and will depend on the GFCF’s own funding restrictions).
If the answer is “Yes!” to most of these questions, then you may be interested in knowing about the GFCF’s new grants programme.
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