Field Focus

Redefining Community Philanthropy

A limited series on generosity, belonging, and what it means to give.

In this Field Focus: Redefining Community Philanthropy series, we dig into the words themselves — what community really means, what philanthropy was always meant to mean, and what an expanded definition could make possible for a field ready to evolve.

Over the next three months, we’ll bring together researchers, practitioners, and movement leaders from around the world who have been doing the work for years — democratizing who gets to be called a philanthropist, honoring the full spectrum of generosity, and, perhaps most importantly, recentering love as the root of this conversation.

Field Focus Essays

Field Focus Webinars

Founding Philanthropists

Founding Philanthropists and the Origins of Community Giving in the U.S.

Join us on July 22 as we examine the lives and legacies of Benjamin Franklin, Rev. Richard Allen, and Rebecca Gratz as windows onto the origins of America’s associational traditions: the threads of civic innovation, Black mutual aid, and women’s organized benevolence.


Catalysts of Community Philanthropy

Catalysts of Community Philanthropy: How Community Foundations, Collective Giving, and Giving Days Strengthen Civic Life

In this webinar, a panel of field experts introduces a shared vocabulary for understanding community philanthropy, highlighting the catalysts — people, networks, and institutions — who weave social fabric, nurture civic engagement, and mobilize generosity in ways that strengthen community self‑determination.

The Foundation Review

Defining Community Philanthropy

Community philanthropy is increasingly promoted as an alternative to institutional, top-down philanthropy, yet the term remains contested. In this article from The Foundation Review, Vol. 18, Issue 1, Dr. Layton defines community philanthropy as a practice rooted in context, power, and relationships rather than a single institutional form. This reframing is significant in a field that tends to emphasize organizational form over lived practice. The article identifies five characteristics that distinguish community philanthropy and offers ways to assess it without flattening its diversity. 
Front cover of The Foundation Review, Volume 18, Issue 1

Alliance Magazine

Reweaving the Social Fabric Amid Latin America’s Fragile Institutions

Latin America is navigating a convergence of deep mistrust, extreme inequality, and chronic institutional fragility. This loss of confidence extends into daily life and is reflected in low interpersonal trust, polarisation, and mounting democratic fatigue across the region. Yet within this difficult landscape, community foundations are helping to redefine legitimacy and trust. In this special feature, Dr. Layton and co-authors explore post-institutional civic infrastructure, highlight adaptive models in action, and present a forecast for the future in which the strength of Latin American community foundations relies not on replicating models inherited from the Global North but in evolving on their own terms.

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