September 6, 2001 | Read Time: 2 minutes
Building Philanthropic and Social Capital: The Work of Community Foundations
edited by Peter Walkenhorst
Community foundations are becoming more popular worldwide, writes Peter Walkenhorst, director of philanthropy and foundations for the Bertelsmann Foundation, in Gütersloh, Germany. The concept of a community foundation originated in the United States, he says. But the model of a foundation focused on local and regional interests and supported by a permanent endowment through the contributions of many donors has spread to other countries thanks to “its ability to adjust to various cultural, societal, and legal environments.”
The five essays in this collection seek to provide an overview of community foundations and guidelines to establish more of them.
Suzanne L. Feurt, managing director for community foundations at the Council on Foundations, in Washington, and Eleanor W. Sacks, a consultant in Portland, Ore., contributed the first essay, which focuses on the history, development, and traits of community foundations worldwide. The essay includes a discussion of the role of associations of grant makers, supporting organizations, and donors in spreading the community-foundation approach.
“Community Foundations and Social Capital” discusses how such foundations pursue different strategies to preserve and create social networks that connect people to each other and to government institutions. Lewis M. Feldstein, president of the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation, in Concord, and Thomas H. Sander, executive director of the Saguro Seminar at the John F. Kennedy School of Government of Harvard University, in Cambridge, Mass., contributed this essay.
Other essays discuss the key elements of successfully building assets; how the focus on donor services may have contributed to the growth of community foundations in the United States and Canada; and the role of marketing for community foundations.
The book was sponsored by the Transatlantic Community Foundation Network, a program of the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation and the Bertelsmann Foundation that seeks to promote communication between community foundations in Europe and North America.
Publisher: Bertelsmann Foundation Publishers, P.O. Box 103, D-33311, Gütersloh, Germany ; (49) (52) 418-0402-82; fax (49) (52) 414-6970; http://stiftung.bertelsmann.de/publications; 142 pages; $16; I.S.B.N. 3-89204-563-1.
