26.06.2023 / Perspectives

Author: Stefan Cibian Ph.D.

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Sustainability is not happening by itself. It is constantly generated and maintained by how society works. The war in Ukraine and the COVID-19 pandemic illustrate two of the world’s challenges today that affect sustainability prospects. Globally, overlapping paths of transformation, such as digitalization and climate change, generate uncertainty, putting society to the test. 

In addressing that uncertainty, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are one of the most significant achievements of the current multilateral system. All member states of the United Nations (UN) negotiated them. Once adopted the SDGs became a functional framework for thinking about and acting toward enhanced sustainability. 

Several overlapping crises and disruptive transformations reinforce the sustainability challenges targeted by the SDGs: the climate crisis; the digitalization process; continued global and national inequality; and transformed security challenges such as terrorism, cyber threats, and insecurity, among others. While the world today does possess multiple pieces of the puzzle needed to address these overlapping crises, it is not enough. What is also necessary is a revamped connection of different stakeholders, creation of new types of partnerships that bring assets, knowledge, energy, and capacity to act together in mechanisms that deliver change.  

Community foundations are mechanisms that do just that. They present several advantages: their mission, a whole-of-community approach, convening capacity, trust, and a focus on assets. The community foundation’s mission is to strengthen local community capacity. Such a mission alone positions CFs as sustainability mechanisms in their respective locations. Growing the capacity of local communities implies paying constant attention to how society transforms and what is needed to put assets to work in new contexts. Their whole-of-community approach, alongside a focus for assets, enables CFs to give confidence and appreciation to positive and proactive communality actors, strengthening their capacity to act. The convening power of CFs positions them as an essential ligand, even between unlikely partners. Above all, the CF mechanism relies on trust and generates trust, strengthening community and societal action.

Community foundations exist in almost 2000 regions of the world, in some for over 100 years. They are engines of community action in all these communities, constituting and enlarging a badly needed infrastructure for sustainability.

Departments: Policy Analysis and Outreach Department, Research Department, Center on Global Affairs and Post Development, Society, Crisis, and Resilience Program

Regions: Romania, Europe, Global

Themes: Civil Society, Philanthropy and Community Development, Sustainable Development Goals