Giving for Change
An international alliance to strengthen civil society organizations
Through training, peer learning, and small grants, Giving for Change supports civil society organizations from eight countries in Africa, the Middle East and Latin America to mobilize funds, resources and other types of support for their work within their own context.
The Giving for Change Alliance is spearheaded by an international consortium consisting of the Global Fund for Community Foundations, Africa Philanthropy Network, Kenya Community Development Foundation, Wilde Ganzen Foundation and includes partners from eight countries.
These organizations are brought together by their shared vision on community-led development through community and domestic philanthropy. A partnership has been established with the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the 2021-2025 period.
Giving for Change Annual Report 2024
Mobilising people as active agents of change
If organizations mobilize people as active agents of change rather than passive recipients of aid, they unlock their collective power and agency. An organization with a local constituency is also better placed to engage with government from a position of voice and power. Moreover, raising resources locally reduces dependency on foreign aid.
Bold vision
The Giving for Change program sets out a bold vision for transforming how “development is done” by focusing on the recognition and importance of domestic resources to increase local ownership, unlock agency, and strengthen communities’ abilities to claim entitlements from different actors, especially government.
Through a combination of community level, national and global activities, Giving for Change promotes new kinds of participatory approaches to giving. These are aimed at building a broad base of citizens claiming their rights and the rights of others.
Advocating for an enabling environment for giving
Our partners also advocate for a more enabling environment for civil society organizations and philanthropy on a national level. They encourage their governments to give their countries’ civil society organizations room to grow, for example by amending legislation.
Finally, we call for a more equal balance of power within the international development sector in order to avoid a ‘top-down’ way of working and shift power and resources closer to the ground. We do this in the Netherlands, for example, by organizing workshops and webinars, and by publishing articles in collaboration with Vice Versa – a Dutch magazine for development cooperation.
