Communities have enormous power when they are connected and inclusive
Harriet McCallum There’s something special about this place. It’s easy to know why people have moved from all over Australia ...
Show your solidarity with Ukraine through action
This open letter was authored by the National Network of Local Philanthropy Development in Ukraine, and also appears on their ...
Building power together and creating space for change
Ese Emerhi At the Global Fund for Community Foundations (GFCF), the #ShiftThePower Fellowship idea started with several questions: How can ...
What I learned from the #ShiftThePower Fellowship
Artwork by Freedom Studios. Yande Kalengo When I received the confirmation email about being selected for this fellowship, with The ...
From transaction to transformation: A possible path for funder-grantee relationships?
For too long, the interaction between funders and grantees has been reduced to little more than a transactional exchange. Money ...
The system we want – A curation of posters exhibited at the #ShiftThePower Global Summit
In December 2023, 730 people from 77 countries met in Bogotá for the #ShiftThePower Global Summit. Participants represented the range of ...
Did the pandemic prompt a rethinking of funder-grantee dynamics?
The pandemic also saw funders who had previously shied away from social justice work become more amenable to funding these ...
Sentido: A poem on alternative measurement systems
By Yasmin Morais we flatten our storiesto fit the metricsthe linesthe timesthe tablesthat are so logicalthat lose their colorand are ...
What a Balinese massage taught me about measuring what matters
Nina Fitzsimons In July 2024, the Global Fund for Community Foundations (GFCF) extended their global reach to include Australia in ...
To my feminist siblings, there is a funding crisis in feminist activism.
When the sector talks about donor fatigue or donors saying they don’t see where the money is going. Well, only ...
Evolving together: What caterpillars can teach us about transforming philanthropy
Have you heard of imaginal cells? This is what Amaha Selassie asked us as we sat in the jungle-themed hotel ...
Shifting power in Bogotá: Notes from the #ShiftThePower Global Summit
Recognizing that no single person has capacity to take on the whole system, incremental change in multiple different places can ...
Llamamiento a los participantes en la COP28
Mientras los líderes mundiales se reunían en la COP de Dubai, más de 700 agentes de cambio que trabajan en ...
Do you believe that another way is possible? Come join us for the #ShiftThePower Global Summit, 5–7 December 2023 in Bogotá, Colombia
Do you want to be part of a global conversation that puts communities in charge of their own development and ...
Join one of the many weaving conversations on the road to Bogotá!
Over the course of 2023, a number of events and discussions are being organized on the road to the #ShiftThePower Global ...
Measuring in complexity
On 9th May 2023, the Global Fund for Community Foundation hosted a meeting with Deepthy Menon in conversation with Barry ...
Human-centred mentorship in global health research: Are we ready to give what it takes?
Given its nature of being an interpersonal endeavour, the human-centred mentorship process is a complex array of responsibilities that requires ...
Applications are now open for the 2023 #ShiftThePower Fellowship!
Are you involved in exciting, trailblazing and experimental grassroots or community-led work? Are you interested in being part of broader ...
Planting the seeds for an emergent development system
At the Centre for Disaster Preparedness (CDP) in The Philippines, we have always dreamed of contributing to system change in development. But we were also conscious ...
Colombia, here we come! Bogotá to host the 2023 #ShiftThePower Global Summit
We are excited to announce that the 2023 #ShiftThePower Summit will take place in Bogotá! The Colombian hosts for this ...
Are funders ready for mutual accountability?
Local organizations receiving funding are, by default, expected to transparently share intimate details about themselves (When were you founded? Who ...
An open letter to international donors and NGOs who want to genuinely help Ukraine
This letter originally appears on the website of the National Network of Local Philanthropy Development in Ukraine. We welcome you ...
Myths of preparedness: What we’ve learnt from the pandemic
Is preparedness for the pandemic and for other disasters a myth or a reality? Whatever might be claimed at national ...
Decolonization cannot be cosmetic: Moving the development industry beyond rhetoric
There can be no band-aid solutions to reversing the insidious and perverse nature of coloniality. For those of us in ...
A new path to mentorship for emerging global health leaders in low-income and middle-income countries
The fifth annual Global Health 50/50 report highlighted that 75% of the 2,000 governing board seats are held by high-income ...
Localization, decolonizing and #ShiftThePower; are we saying the same thing?
Many advocates of localization would prefer to ignore the issue of racism, hoping that it will go away or that ...
Can money buy everything? Resourcing in the new system
When we think capital or resources (I will use those terms inter-changeably) we often tend to automatically think money, finances, ...
Moving from the old to the new: Why it’s time to rethink civil society resourcing
If we want to shift from the “system we have”, to “the system we want”, what needs to change? What ...
Announcing the 2022 #ShiftThePower Fellows
The six-month Fellowship is an experimental approach aimed at strengthening the collective “weave” between change-makers around the world and, by ...
Rethinking civil society resourcing
In Zambia, [which, as a middle-income country, is starting to see international donor funding drop off], discussions around civil society ...
Aid reformers have been talking to each other, it is time to talk to the public
The public in donor countries should be entrusted with more than this half story – their tax paying vested interests ...
#ShiftThePower Manifesto for Change: Where it started and where we are now
It was three years ago – in what feels like a very different world – that a small group of ...
Call for expressions of interest to join the inaugural cohort of #ShiftThePower fellows!
Are you interested in supporting broader efforts to shift power and build the (civil) society we want by helping to ...
Navigating the violent process of decolonization
Speaking up is also an opportunity to continue the virtuous cycle of compassion for the many researchers in low income ...
Aid as reparations is misplaced and harmful
International aid as a form of reparations by former colonial powers to their former colonies has remained a popular notion ...
De-linking power from wealth
We reimagine what the world and international development would look like if we de-linked power from wealth that creates artificial ...
Confronting the silence of our philanthropic actions
Some philanthropic players have spoken up against vaccine discrimination toward the Global South but most are still silent ...
Making the invisible visible: #ShiftThePower, mapping and meaning
Over the past two years, participants in the #ShiftThePower movement have created a vibrant, living, and evolving network map of ...
Time to rethink “capacity” in the Global South
Authentic capacity does not have to be pegged against parameters, or measures that have no bearing to local realities ...
The road travelled and the road ahead: A conversation with Tatiana Fraga Diez as Comunalia turns ten
The GFCF checked in with Tatiana to discuss the work of Comunlia ...
A visual journey of shifting power: Dalia Association in Palestine
The Dalia Association in Palestine is happy and honoured to be curating the Treehouse for the week of 20th - ...
The birth of #ShiftThePower
The deliberate use of the hashtag #ShiftThePower was intended to provoke. Frustrations about the shortcomings of philanthropy and development aid ...
The winner takes it all
These are real-life situations that are purely hurtful where the Global South organisation encounters three hurtful behavioural patterns – superiority, ...
#Vaccines4All: Open letter to EU & UK leaders
While some countries begin to talk about recovery, are starting to resume normal life and are able once again to ...
Pathways to effectively operationalize the localization agenda
“We need to go ahead and interrogate the architecture of this localisation agenda; does it appreciate the indigenous development models ...
The localization agenda: How successful is it?
However, donors seem to have failed to recognise and wholly appreciate the crucial place and role of local organisations in ...
Response: Here’s how we build local
policies. The Giving for Change Alliance continues their important work on community philanthropy with Dutch support: Against a global background ...
Building local giving is central to shifting power
Getting people to see themselves as having agency and being able to exercise choices by giving – rather than as ...
Shifting the power in Chile: What role for philanthropy?
In a time were environmental and health catastrophes are imposing the philanthropic agenda there is now a unique opportunity to ...