TCFN participants represent 17 countries in Europe and North America, forming a multinational network of community foundation leaders, researchers, and thinkers. TCFN is currently hosted by Community Foundations of Canada (CFC), which is based in Ottawa, Canada.
Download from the Newsletter page
In this issue: September 2009
Participants:
Jan Despiegelaere, Peter Hero, Andy Beeforth, Emmett Carson
Publications:
Community Foundations in Poland
Events:
International Seminar: Community Foundations: resource mobilization, participation and social responsibility (Uruguay) 3 October 2009
Council on Foundations (USA) Fall Conference for Community Foundations, 5-7 October 2009
This piece was featured in the July 2009 issue of Cumbria Life magazine.
Do you twitter? I’m not asking about your conversational style, but enquiring about whether you are participating in one of the more recent forms of what I have only just learned is called ‘social media’. Twitter is along with Bebo, MySpace, Facebook, ‘LinkedIn’, Flikr and blogging all ways of keeping in touch with people who share interests and passions.
But why raise this on the charities page? Well because if used properly they can be harnessed to raise money and enhance the work of charities.
You may be suspicious of these ‘time wasting distractions’, however if you are in your teens or twenties gaining information and communicating through multiple internet based platforms is already second nature. Watch your children or grand children use a computer. It’ll be an education to see how their fingers glide across the keyboard and seamlessly move from screen to screen.
Social media is not all about telling people what you had for tea or whether you’re going to the pub. Matters of real importance and new social and political movements have been born and developed through these tools. The protests following the Iranian elections are just one example.
Businesses that fail to grasp new technology are likely to fall behind their competitors. So it’s important for our local communities that our charities adopt these tools if they haven’t already.
The cost of participation is very small. Most of the software is free and for less than £200 a group can buy a camera and digital sound recorder. With these tools they can upload pictures and movie clips onto interactive sites which show in a very real way the value of group’s activities.
We experience significant movements of people into and out of the county. Are these the tools for reaching out to the Cumbrian diaspora? That is people who have lived and worked here, but now are away but retain an association and affection for our communities? With over 3,000 local charities in the county they can also be the introduction to our very welcome ‘off comers’.
What’s also important about Facebook, Blogs and Twitter is that unlike conventional web sites is they provide opportunities for people to enter into discussions. Users of a caring service can provide feedback and make suggestions for how services could be improved and share ideas with other users. Donors can challenge a charity about its stance on particular issues and do so in an entirely public space.
Thanks for reading I’m off to do some tweeting and to update my status on Facebook, but only after popping next door to say hi to the neighbours.
Click here to visit Andy’s blog.
Bilateral relations among members of the European Union are still playing an important role, despite the overall influence of the European integration process. Twelve young professionals from the Czech Republic and Germany will get together four times in four different places in both of the countries to become familiar with some phenomena of the European integration process.
Young professionals from Germany and the Czech Republic working in politics, public administration, media, business or the non-governmental sector and sharing a deep interest in European affairs are welcome to hand in their applications by October 9, 2009.
The Czech-German Young Professionals Program is a partnership program of the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP), the Association for International Affairs (AMO), the Robert Bosch Stiftung and the Czech-German Fund for the Future.
Download the informational brochure here.
More information is available at the Robert Bosch Stiftung website.
CLAEH (El Centro Latinoamericano de Economía Humana) will be hosting an International Seminar to explore Community Foundations: resource mobilization, participation and social responsibility. CLAEH extends an invitation to participate in a dialogue with different stakeholders in national and international development who will analyze the concept and practices of community foundations as tools to strength local development processes. View the agenda here: CLAEH Conference Information.
Below please find details of the event:
Saturday, October 3, 2009
8:30 am to 5:30 pm
Bastión del Carmen: Rivadavia and Virrey Ceballos
Colonia de Sacramento, Colonia, Uruguay
Additional information and registration: fundcomunitarias@claeh.org.uy
Community Foundations of Canada (CFC) recently released a new online toolkit designed to help communities tackle issues of broad concern and to assist organizations interested in playing a catalytic role in their communities. Building Community Vitality: A Leadership Toolkit offers users a wide range of practical resources to help them explore the concept of community leadership as it applies to their organization.
The web-based toolkit includes:
“Building Community Vitality is a very practical tool to share stories, thoughts and ideas amongst staff and board members from community foundations,” said Jan Despiegelaere of the Community Foundation for West-Flanders in Belgium. “The Transatlantic Community Foundation Network already helps participants exchange their experience via focused peer exchanges. Using Building Community Vitality, we can now take it a step further and continuously elaborate on these experiences when we return to our own communities. Our work will be even more engaged, more inspired and more efficient.”
The toolkit can be visited at http://cfc-fcc.ca/building-community-vitality/.
A comprehensive ten year summary of the state of community foundations in Poland has been published by the Federation of Polish Community Foundations. The Federation, created in 2007 and registered in 2008, continues activities run by an informal network of foundations, operating since 2001. The report is the first study prepared by the Federation and it contains information on 19 Polish community foundations. By the end of December 2008, the foundations between them had awarded 2,914 grants and 5,661 scholarships amounting to PLN 11,719,000 ($4,140,745 USD). In total, they have raised PLN 31,468,000 ($11,117,889.11 USD) and created capital endowment of PLN 5,866,000 ($2,073,920.54 USD).
The report covers detail of each foundation and discusses the successes and the obstacles each faces. It invites cooperation with sponsors and community foundations from other countries.
The report’s authors acknowledge among others, the expertise of TCFN member Iwona Olkowicz from the Academy for the Development of Philanthropy in Poland. The report itself was produced with the support of the Mott Foundation, the WINGS Global Fund for Community Foundations, and the Academy for the Development of Philanthropy in Poland which supported the start-up of the Federation.
Download the report here.
Community Foundation Insights has undertaken research with over 90 US community foundations to follow up the analysis of the impact of the recession on the field it published in late 2008. Partly funded by the Council on Foundations’ Community Foundation Leadership Team, “Taking Informed Action in Challenging Times” is very detailed and technical in some respects but its summaries and key findings are accessible for use and adaptation by community foundations in other countries and at different stages.
The report conveys the pressures and problems for community foundations themselves as they face the recession and it gives much evidence of how they are using limited resources to meet greater community needs and have emerged as strong community leaders through increased convening, capacity building, and collaboration. The researchers hope that it will inspire future action for increased community impact and sustainability.
The writers list some findings that compare community foundation activities late last year with action being taken now:
• A five-fold increase in the number of foundations engaged in activity directly linked to the economic downturn, such as conducting targeted research on the impact of the downturn on the community or asking grantees to shift funding to basic services
• A five-fold growth in the number of foundations that have conducted a scan to know which local organizations are heavily reliant on government funding
• Three times the number of community foundations that have first – responder lists, provide operating support, and act as a convener of other large funders
• Approximately twice as many community foundations as before now have safety net funds, shorter decision cycles, and a policy of supporting mergers
• The number of organizations that make program related investments has grown by 50%.
In building on our work at the TCFN peer exchange in Dublin earlier this summer, we’d like to collect some ideas on how social media tools including Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube have helped your community foundation in connecting with donors, grantees, and others that are interested in your work.
Take a look at one of our tools that resulted from the event, and download the Social Media Circle. This offers some ideas on how your community foundation can use fun, quick, and free social media tools to share stories with your colleagues, friends, networks, and partners in the field.
Also, review the Community Foundation for Ireland’s Social Media Policy, which offers some ideas on how to encourage members of your staff to promote your community foundation’s social media tools in a manner that reflects the mission, purpose, and reputation of the organization.
These tools can be very valuable in helping us share our stories, and if you have a special story, tips, or tools, please share!
