Community Foundation Support Programme
For local causes, from local sources!
The Community Foundation Support Programme (CFSP) promotes the community foundation concept in Hungary and provides financial and professional support to start-up groups and registered community foundations. The field of community foundations is very international, therefore a lot of the things we do is inspired by what is happening abroad while we are also open to share our experiences with people and organisations beyond Hungary.
COMMUNITY FOUNDATIONS IN HUNGARY
Community foundations can be found in 8 Hungarian big cities and in 5 districts of the capital, reaching 1.2 million people in total.
WHAT IS A COMMUNITY FOUNDATION?
A community foundation is a local non-governmental organisation set up by people to develop their community. A community foundation provides opportunities to everybody to make their community a better place to live through financial donations, doing volunteer work, sharing an idea or offering pro bono services. A good community foundation promotes values such as active citizenship, social solidarity as well as strengthens the sense of belonging to the community. The community foundation has three key activities:
- (local) fundraising,
- grantmaking,
- community development.
Hungarian community foundations share many of the characteristics of community foundations in other European countries and beyond. At the same time, they are also different to fit our context better and make the most value for communities in Hungary.
HOW DO WE WORK WITH COMMUNITY FOUNDATIONS?
We define Roots & Wings Foundation as a support organisation. We normally start to work with individuals or groups who wish to establish a community foundation. To those with potential, we provide tailor-made financial and professional support from the very beginning until their community foundation becomes strong, which is between 5 to 8 years in our experience. We encourage Hungarian community foundations to be active internationally: to this end we support them to cooperate with community foundations abroad, participate at international study trips and conferences.
GET TO KNOW THE HUNGARIAN COMMUNITY FOUNDATIONS!
Odorheiu Secuiesc Community Foundation gives money and perspective
Summary of an interview with Rozi Csáki, director of the foundation
A guide to community foundations in Hungary
A country report and publication produced by Roots and Wings and published by the European Community Foundation Initiative
First ever Hungarian Swimathon
In 2016 the Ferencváros Community Foundation held the first Swimathon event, where more than 70 swimmers campaigned for 4 social issues and raised more than 8 million forints.
2. Live Crowdfunding Night in Hungary
Ferencváros Community Foundation organised its 2nd event in the 9th district of Budapest, presenting and supporting 3 social initiatives.
The Ferencváros Community Foundation provides diverse support in the emergency situation
Interview with Era Barna, the director of the organisation
The Pécs Community Foundation launches support chain
An article about the initiatives of the organization during the first epidemic
From Marocco to the 9th district of Budapest
Ferencváros Community Foundation’s “Cook the worlds” series invites you to a gastronomic round-the-world trip
Kajakommandó Pécsett
A Pécsi Közösségi Alapítvány programot indít az egyedül élő idős emberek segítésére
WHAT WE LIKE IN THE WORLD OF COMMUNITY FOUNDATION IS
- the wonderful people working in the field;
- the diversity, creative solutions and commitment to serve communities and make them a better place;
- the openness to share with and honest interest in learning from one another.
WHAT DO WE SEEK IN INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION?
We have benefited tremendously from learning from and cooperating with community foundations abroad. Their ideas, advice and support helped and continues to help us adopt the community foundation concept to our context and develop our work. As a national support organisation in Hungary, we are also eager to support community foundations and their support organisations abroad with our experience to return what we got, but also use the exchange as a way of understanding and improving our own practice.
We also seek most of our funding from abroad as the context in Hungary is not conducive at the moment for financing our work.
WHAT CAN WE DO TOGETHER?
At the moment, we have ongoing contacts with community foundations and support organisations in most European countries and we are active in the European Community Foundation Initiative. We are keen to strengthen these relations through short and long-term cooperation. We are especially interested in supporting start-up community foundations, facilitating the international work of Hungarian community foundations and learning things that are new to us. We are also happy to engage with people beyond Europe – we know a lot of interesting initiatives are going on and would happy to be part of them.
If you would like to know more about our work or cooperate with us, please contact György Hámori, programme officer of CFSP:
