Community philanthropy begins with a simple premise: most communities already hold more than they realise. This session explored what happens when civil society actors adopt this lens — shifting from a needs-based narrative to an assets-based practice — and what community foundations can unlock when they organise local generosity with structure, continuity and trust.

“Building from what we have” suggests that practitioners start in the present, and treat time, skills, relationships, convening power, data, legitimacy and initially small pools of money as real assets. This perspective — often described as Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) — changes the questions we ask. Instead of “What is missing here?”, it becomes “What is already strong, and how do we connect and amplify it?” In practical terms, this means mapping assets with the community, designing mobilisation mechanisms from those findings, and making the early steps participatory, visible and modest in scope at first.

Community foundations were presented as one of the most effective vehicles for this work. Unlike traditional top-down philanthropy, they enable local giving to be held in local funds, governed by local boards, and directed toward local initiatives — especially new and informal ones. Small and flexible grants seed experiments, bring unlikely changemakers into view, and create room for people to learn by doing. Crucially, the value offered is not only financial. Community foundations lend credibility, connect peers, unlock mentoring and expertise, and open doors that informal groups cannot open alone.

The session highlighted how national “incubators” can accelerate this movement. In several countries, support organisations help cohorts of local initiators to found community foundations through structured, time-bound programmes. Participants learn governance and fundraising basics; they run small fundraising events; they give out a first grant round to local projects under fiscal sponsorship; and they receive match funding when they mobilise local resources, to boost their and their communities’ confidence that local philanthropy can work and over time grow into a culture of giving. The methodology is deliberately practical: start small, test many things, build confidence, then repeat what works.

During the session, examples from Peru, Romania and Serbia illustrated this approach. Across contexts, several design choices stood out. Make participation in donating, pooling funding and volunteering expertise to emergent initiatives enjoyable, accessible and rewarding — people return to practices that feel meaningful and doable. To civic initiators and local leaders, offer as much support in trust, introductions and visibility as in money — these are assets in their own right. And invest in people, not just projects: leadership academies for young professionals in mid-sized cities, for example, keep talent rooted locally and create cross-sector cohorts of peers who are more likely to collaborate in the future, as they have a shared formative experience where they develop trust, discover resonant visions for the future of their community and look at their city as a canvas for new possibilities.

The conversation also looked ahead. Around the world, practitioners are asking how community foundations may need to evolve in a time of deep disruption — climate impacts, democratic backsliding, technological shocks. Peer “huddles” are forming to hold these questions together, testing roles that go beyond grantmaking: stewarding shared spaces, animating civic imagination, convening across differences, and sustaining the long patience required for cultural change. The throughline is clear. If we see communities as resourceful rather than deficient, and organise accordingly, we widen the circle of people who can act. Our role, then, is less to deliver on behalf of others and more to catalyse others to lead — finding the assets that are already present, making them visible, organising them into tools, and helping new ideas, new doers and new capacities to emerge and multiply.

To learn more about community foundations, read here our interview with Alexandra Stef for the NECE Magazine: HOPE.

Alexandra Stef is a learning strategist and participation designer supporting community-led change. She leads Collective Learning & Innovation at Inspire Institute and consults through Collective Futures. Based in Madrid, she works globally to co-create civic and philanthropic infrastructure that fosters belonging, imagination, and systems change.