What is a Community Foundation?

Community foundations are a structured way for a community to unlock its many resources, build collective capacity, and affect lasting social change.

Every community is abundant in its own unique assets – from financial resources to trusted networks, local knowledge, ideas and aspiration. Community foundations offer a mechanism to unlock these resources, leveraging them for meaningful social change.

The community foundation model adapts to local needs and circumstances. While no two foundations are exactly the same, all share a number of key characteristics. They are:

Open and transparent. Every community foundation is a public-facing, not-for-profit organisation registered with the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission, governed by local community members who are appointed transparently to volunteer boards.

Independent and non-commercial. Community foundations are of and for the community; they operate independently of business, political parties, religious institutions, or high net worth individuals or families. Every investment in a foundation is an investment in the community.  

Collective and accessible. Community foundations remove barriers to civic participation; anyone can become a co-investor in their community’s development. 

Trusted and neutral. Community foundations offer a unique platform for engagement and collaboration, bringing together civil society and corporate and government sectors, often brokering relationships across geographic and party lines, to work collectively for the communal good.  

Perpetual and durable with a long-term focus. Community foundations are built to withstand external forces, see beyond short-term funding horizons and outlast economic cycles. As regions grapple with complex economic changes, shifts in resource flows and demographics, and repeating natural disasters, community foundations align, connect and leverage community assets, so as to better engage with new challenges and changes. Community foundations are ideal backbone organisations to support the kind of long-term interventions required for systemic change.

Excerpt from Community Foundations Australia’s website 

Why partner with a community foundation?   

People choose to partner with community foundations to create impact. You may be an individual donor, a community organisation, a collective giving group, a government entity or a private foundation. Here are some reasons why people partner with a community foundation:  

• The community is in charge of its own future
• Everything stays in the community
• Results in solutions that last, owned and directed by local people
• Pooled resources go further
• Funding is future-focused and evolves with community needs
• It creates strategic partnerships that fills gaps and avoids duplication 
• Partners invest in the networks of people that underpin resilient communities   
• Resources flow quickly in times of crisis 
• People become co-investors in local development

We value our partners. DCF couldn’t do the work of the Foundation without you! Collectively our partners may fund us, provide us with services in-kind, or do important mission-aligned work with our local communities. There is a shared generosity with our partners.