A new look for the GFCF!

Welcome to our new website! It’s been ten years since we launched our old website and logo, and it was time for a re-fresh. To be honest, in the last couple of years in particular, it had started to feel as though both our work and the state of the global community philanthropy movement had long moved on from the story that our website was telling.

In our new website, we want to convey a few important messages:

• Our primary – and unique – focus continues to be supporting the development of community philanthropy around the world, and strengthening the evidence base that underpins it. We will continue to do this through grants and other kinds of support and to highlight the work of the organizations around the world that we work with.
• On our home page, you will see that we have also added two new sections: #ShiftThePower and Durable Development. Diminishing aid flows, donor exit strategies, the shrinking space and #AidToo are some of the issues that have pushed fundamental questions around power, trust, sustainability – and the nature of aid itself – to the fore. We believe that community philanthropy has an important contribution to make when it comes to inverting traditional power dynamics and ensuring a resilient, credible and rooted civil society sector, particularly when it is part of a broader range of strategies and emergent practices. For that to happen, however, it needs to be understood as a central, not a “nice-but-not-essential” after-thought, better integrated into larger process for change.
• These days, we invest more time and effort in the business of network “weaving,” both within the community philanthropy space and with others within broader movements to shift power and challenge the conventions of development aid. Our new logo (note the “weave” of its texture) reflects that.
• We are increasingly aware that there are many organizations – including donors and international NGOs – who are looking for meaningful ways to work differently and, in a few cases, even do themselves out of a job. But switching from a “programme delivery” mode to a “building for the long-term” or “building to leave” one is challenging. Community philanthropy is still not well known or understood within large pockets of mainstream development and philanthropy, and so our offer of Advisory Services is an open invitation to those that are interested to bridge that gap, to make connections and to provide strategic and technical advice.
• Finally, there may be a few snags to correct and links to update, so please bear with us as we sort them out (or, even better, tell us!).