The Challenge of Sustainability: How German Community Foundations Can Strengthen their Financial and Organizational Stability
Bernadette Hellman, 2010, Aktive Burgerschaft e.V.
In Germany, the first community foundation was established in 1996. Since then, community foundations have become the fastest groing form of philanthropy. At least 257 have already been formed. Germany underwent a boom in the establishment of new community foundations without parallel in any other country, as the Global Status Report Community Foundations 2008 has shown. Germany has now surpassed Canada to have the second largest number of community foundations after the United States.
However, the existing community foundations are facing severe challenges because they lack organizational stability and – above all – financial sustainability. As the latter is the most urgent problem around which all other issues revolve, the main focus of my research is to explore how German community foundations can succeed in increasing their permanent endowments and operating budgets. The overall aim is to analyze how they can learn from community foundations elsewhere in achieving a high degree of financial stability, in order to be able to build capacity and ensure long-term funding to the community.
Written in the framework of the 2010 Emerging Leaders International Fellows Program of the Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society at The Graduate Center, The City University of New York (CUNY)