How to engage community foundations in the SDGs

San Francisco — Last week, the first ever North American Community Foundation Summit brought leaders of community foundations together in Mexico City. The theme of the meeting was “leave no one behind,” and the focus was on how community foundations can support progress toward the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. On the occasion of the summit, the Council on Foundations released a report arguing that these goals cannot be reached without the involvement of community foundations. It builds on a previous report looking at the trend toward international grantmaking by United States community foundations, which the council defines as “grantmaking public charities that are dedicated to improving the lives of people in a defined local geographic area. They bring together the financial resources of individuals, families, and businesses to support effective nonprofits in their communities.” Devex spoke with Natalie Ross, vice president of the Council on Foundations and author of the report, to understand how leaders of NGOs can engage with these community foundations as they begin to use the SDGs as a framework for action. Ross described them as critical partners in bringing the SDGs to life through a place-based strategy. “If you’re an INGO, and you’re asking yourself, ‘How do I localize?,’ have you asked yourself: ‘Is there a community foundation here?’ They are trying to build up on an endowed set of resources to support civil society long after aid is gone,” she told Devex. She suggested the Global Fund for Community Foundations, based in South Africa, as a powerful matchmaker between community foundations, and potentially for NGOs looking to connect with these foundations. “I believe the SDGs are one of the most inclusive frameworks ever developed by the U.N., and there is real value in grassroots groups owning them,” Ross said. “Are you investing in local philanthropic infrastructure to sustain civil society even if there is no development aid? That is the real power of community foundations in the global south.” The report outlines 10 steps for how community foundations that aren’t already working with the SDGs can get started. Those steps include: 1. Studying the SDGs, by exploring resources such as the U.N.’s Sustainable Development Knowledge Platform, and connecting with others in the community for their thoughts about the local relevance of the global goals. 2. Mapping the SDGs to local challenges, identifying no more than four that are most relevant to the pressing needs of the community. 3. Setting baselines and defining targets, finding local data that is consistent with the SDGs’ global indicators, in order to make an apples-to-apples comparison with other communities. 4. Tracking and communicating grantmaking; identifying which SDGs the foundation is already supporting; or otherwise aligning grantmaking to the SDGs. 5. Telling others about the SDGs; educating donors, grantees, and partners about the global goals and their local relevance. 6. Building a coalition: Bringing citizens and nonprofits on the ground together to ensure plans to achieve the SDGs are linked to their needs. 7. Leveraging the power of pilots, making sure to learn from other successful models, and sharing learnings with others. 8. Building solutions together with others, ensuring there is cross-sector ownership of solutions, and leading that co-creation process if possible. 9. Tracking and sharing progress, communicating both what is working and what is not, whether through a community dashboard, an annual awards program, or another approach. 10. Ensuring an enabling environment is in place, by working across sectors to make sure that everything from legal frameworks to budgets are there, and not likely to shrink over time. As community foundations act on these suggestions, they may look to NGOs for guidance, opening up the opportunity for partnerships, Ross said. The report describes how philanthropic infrastructure organizations like the Council on Foundations, and its counterparts in Mexico and Canada which helped to organize the North American Community Foundation Summit, can act as conveners to share knowledge across borders and create partnerships to achieve goals like the SDGs. Ross explained that community foundations will be critical not only in moving from billions to trillions in order to finance the SDGs, but also in providing local expertise and community buy-in, which will be critical for long-term success. “How do we sustain the impact we want to have as a development community?” Ross asked. “If we really want to sustain civil society at the hyper-local level, growing local cultures of philanthropy is how we do that.”