DOI
10.9707/1944-5660.1378
Key Points
This article proposes that foundations committed to community-led development must be prepared to invest in efforts that empower the community. In particular, there is potential for funders willing to challenge the top-down nature of the current aid and development system through use of critical conscious-raising to claim a transformative role in shifting from a “recipient” to a “citizen” approach to community development.
For foundations to assist communities in criticizing this power imbalance and using the insights that result to challenge the system requires the “three-legged stool” of community philanthropy — strengthening capacities, developing assets, and building trust — to become a “chair” by adding a fourth leg — growing community power.
This article explores community giving, a norm in communalist societies, as a viable entry point for helping communities explore and understand their own experiences, and presents a tool that calculates the financial value of a community’s contribution to its own development, defining it as equity that can be brought to the development table.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Wilkinson, S. (2017). #ShiftThePower: Community Giving as a Critical Consciousness-Raising Tool. The Foundation Review, 9(3). https://doi.org/10.9707/1944-5660.1378
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