In response to the growing interest in community foundations, the Bertelsmann Foundation with support and advice of the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation has set up the Transatlantic Community Foundation Network (TCFN). The TCFN provides a platform for the exchange of experience and expertise among community foundations on both sides of the Atlantic. It seeks to identify good practice and share it with emerging and existing community foundations. In addition, its goal is to foster the development of this form of philanthropy in countries where the concept is still new. Given these objectives, the TCFN is a problem- and product-oriented network, designed to pursue a variety of program strategies such as pooling intellectual resources, benchmarking and developing new, innovative approaches. During its first three years of operation the TCFN has evolved into a sophisticated and flexible mechanism that enables community foundation practitioners to pool their intellectual and experiential resources, to articulate institutional performance benchmarks against which to measure progress and to devise innovative methods that encourage the building of community-based philanthropy. As a result of this exchange, TCFN members have developed a range of valuable working papers, primers and other resource materials on the following topics: - Community Foundations as Actors of Civil Society
- Asset Development and Partnering with Donors
- Governance
- Organizational Development and Effectiveness
- Program Management and Innovative Grantmaking
- Community Leadership
- Raising the Visibility of Community Foundations
The Network has been hosted by Community Foundations of Canada (CFC) since January 2009, and it is currently based in Ottawa, Ontario. |
