This masterclass explores how community foundations create and sustain trust in democratic societies marked by polarisation, institutional distrust and social fragmentation. Building on the framing of trust as the “functional infrastructure of social life”, the session will combine specific best-practice examples with practical scenario work to show how Romanian community foundations create conditions for cooperation between people, organisations, donors, public institutions and informal civic actors. It will also invite participants to adopt and adapt selected practices from a community foundations’ toolkit to support their own trust-building work within communities.