Grantcraft Guide to Community Philanthropy for Donors

This paper is for donors looking for ways to ensure that our interventions produce lasting results that are owned and directed by the people they are meant to benefit. It offers practical advice and examples based on the experiences of a variety of different donors, as well as some thoughts on how we donors can do more to share and shift power while fulfilling our own institutional oversight and accountability requirements. We approached this paper through two primary sections. First, we introduce the community philanthropy idea and other associated concepts. Second, we show how different donors have used what we are calling a “community philanthropy approach” or “lens” as a deliberate strategy to deflect power away from themselves and focus instead on dynamics, relationships, and resources at the community level.