Learn how your community foundation can act on climate 

Active Philanthropy and the European Community Foundation Initiative (ECFI) have joined forces to help make sense of the relevance and impact of climate change at local level and to determine options for community foundations with regard to both mitigation and adaptation.   

Starting in January 2023, ECFI is inviting up to 30 community foundation representatives from Europe to join a special cohort of Active Philanthropy’s online course, Climate + Philanthropy: A Compact Learning Journey.  You can apply to join the cohort as part of the ECFI scholarship program here. 

About the Course  

The question of where to start and how to integrate climate action into our day-to-day work can feel overwhelming. The course “Climate + Philanthropy” has been designed to equip you with everything you need on your climate journey and drive change within your sphere of influence.   

Throughout the course, you’ll have the unique opportunity to hear insights from over 20 climate and philanthropy practitioners who share their knowledge and experience to help you get to a place of impact faster.  

The eight-week long course blends self-paced learning with live peer-exchange workshops. You’ll come away with confidence, a clear picture of how to integrate climate into your work. You will build a solid foundation on climate change basics and explore how to align their grant-making, operations and investing with climate action. Upon completion, participants will have developed an action plan outlining the next steps for their community foundation. Moreover, you will have built a supportive network of other community foundations to collaborate with.   

For more about the course structure and content (including the course prospectus, Trailer Video and FAQs), please see the course page at learn.activephilanthropy.org.   

The ECFI scholarship programme for community foundations

The ECFI/ Active Philanthropy cohort is open to every community foundation from Europe that wants to take an active role in integrating climate change into its work and become a driver for sustainable change in its constituency. No prior knowledge in sustainability or climate is needed.   

The course is designed to fit easily into a regular working week: The time commitment for the eight-week course is roughly 1.5-3 hours per week, comprising self-paced online learning and five live interactive sessions on Zoom. Participants who joined the course at the same starting date will stay together as a cohort along the course.   

This cohort will run from the 23rd of January 2023 until the 28th of March 2023. The interactive Zoom sessions will take place from 14.00 - 15.30h CET on the following days:  

• Interactive Session I: 24. January 2023 
• Interactive Session II: 14. February 2023  
• Interactive Session III: 28. February 2023
• Interactive Session IV: 14. March 2023
• Interactive Session V: 28. March 2023 

ECFI will work with the course participants with the aim to facilitate a European community foundation climate action network for on-going peer exchange and to enable learning and actions to be shared more widely in the community foundation field.  

ECFI is running a scholarship programme for community foundation representatives that will cover the course fee. You can apply for one of the ECFI scholarships here. Once we have received your application, a member of the ECFI team will contact you to set up a 30-minute interview. A condition for the scholarship is your commitment to completing the course and your interest in exploring with the other community foundations how we can collectively take our climate work forward. For the scholarship programme the diversity of the participants will be taken into account. ECFI can offer a maximum of one scholarship per organisation (further team members can participate on a self-funded basis). 

You can also participate in the community foundation cohort on a self-funded basis.