History
The Fund emerged in January 2006 as a three-year pilot project, the joint initiative of the World Bank, Ford Foundation, Charles Stewart Mott Foundation and WINGS (Worldwide Initiatives for Grantmaker Support) as a mechanism to support community foundation development in transitioning and developing countries. During the pilot phase the GFCF has been hosted by the European Foundation Centre in Brussels and a Management Committee was appointed to oversee its programmes and operations. Since the launch of its grantmaking programme in June 2006, the Fund has made grants amounting to almost US $1.8 million to 97 organizations in 38 countries.
In September 2007, the Fund embarked on a detailed feasibility process regarding its incubation as an independent entity. This extensive process of consultation has given shape to and strengthened the rationale for the incorporation of an independent Fund. Key points arising from the consultation include the following:
- Broad support for the institutionalization of the Fund, as a new funding partner which can serve as an important source of early stage capacity building support for the fast-growing global field of organized community philanthropy.
- A sense that, through its grantmaking and non-grantmaking activities, the Fund can play a unique role in facilitating debate and creative thinking about how philanthropy at community level fits with other development processes.
- Support for the Fund to focus its programmes primarily on philanthropic institutions in developing countries and emerging economies;
- The need to develop structures and networks which represent and connect this emergent global field.
In 2009, the Fund will incorporate as an independent entity, governed by a newly constituted board, set up systems and governance structures best suited both to reaching out to core constituents in its target regions and to influencing international funders at the policy level. For information on the GFCF’s “board in waiting”, click here.
