A Different Kind of Wealth: Mapping a Baseline of African Community Foundations

This article focuses on how building on existing traditions of solidarity is challenging the conventions of mainstream developmen

Zaidi Ya Kitu Chenye Mwanzo Hafifu? Kuibuka Kwa Taasisi Jamii Kama Dhana Mpya Ya Maendeleo

This paper sets out findings from a baseline study of 50 applications for grants from the Global Fund for Community Foundations. The paper uses information gained from the processes of assessing the grants to learn lessons about the state of the field, what it can contribute in terms of outcomes and impact, and hypotheses in taking forward work of this nature. The paper suggests that community philanthropy may have an important role to play in creating a new paradigm for development

The New Generation of Community Foundations

Community foundations have enjoyed considerable growth in recent years, not only in their number but also in their character. This emergence of a "new generation" of community foundations is occurring within a larger context of other emerging forms of "social solidarity" movements and institutions, including rural development philanthropy, member-based organizing and other hybrid forms of citizen-led actions. In an effort to strengthen a conceptual framework for this phenomenon, this paper identifies synergies and linkages across networks (and their respective bodies of literature) that may previously not have been well connected

From Innovation for Localization to Local Philanthropy, Localization and Power

n 2021, five organizations – Save the Children Denmark, Network for Empowered Aid Response (NEAR), West Africa Civil Society Institute (WACSI), STAR Ghana Foundation (SGF) and the Global Fund for Community Foundations (GFCF) participated in an ambitious and experimental joint project.The aim of the project was to "test durable, locally rooted funding mechanisms" in Somalia and Ghana, with the broader purpose of contributing – by demonstration – to efforts within the international humanitarian aid and development sector to transform and localize aid. The purpose of this learning report, curated by the GFCF, is to capture some of the main insights and reflections ofthe participating organizations and to consider the broader implications of and lessons from the project. It focuses on the experiences of those involved and the larger question of how unorthodox configurations of actors and new and different kinds of partnerships might contribute towards transformative change within the international aid system.

More Than the Poor Cousin? The Emergence of Community Foundations as a New Development Paradigm

This paper sets out findings from a baseline study of 50 applications for grants from the Global Fund for Community Foundations. The paper uses information gained from the processes of assessing the grants to learn lessons about the state of the field, what it can contribute in terms of outcomes and impact, and hypotheses in taking forward work of this nature. The paper suggests that community philanthropy may have an important role to play in creating a new paradigm for development. This paper is based on a cohort of grantees that will be followed up as part of evaluation work by the Global Fund for Community Foundations

How Community Philanthropy Shifts Power: What Donors Can Do to Help Make That Happen

While slogans like "think globally, act locally" have been around for decades, still so much decision making about philanthropy happens by stakeholders outside them. This paper intends to address the struggle funders face with giving up power, despite caring deeply about championing local leadership and initiatives. Learn about the "community philanthropy approach" and practical examples of how funders have shared and shifted power without losing sight of their strategic imperatives

Butterfly metapopulations in dynamic habitats

Many species require habitats that are naturally patchily-distributed and ephemeral, but human activities fundamentally alter the rate and scale of habitat change. This thesis describes the development of a new metapopulation simulation model applicable to a broad range of species that depend on dynamic habitat. I apply the model to two' case studies, both involving butterfly species that use early-successional habitats and that are UK BiodiversIty Action Plan priority species. I describe. two methods for parameterising the model for a particular metapopulation in a particular landscape. One method uses parallel disturbance ar:d population presence data for a few consecutive years; the other derives population parameters and landscape parameters from separate data sources. In the first case study, I found that the BAP target for Heath Fritillary (Melitaea athalia) populations in the Blean Woods, Kent, could either be met by approximately doubling the coppicing effort, or by concentrating the existing effort into one of the larger woodland blocks. In the second case study, I found that the rate of heathland burning in the South Stack area of Angl~seywas not enough by itself to sustain the metapopulation of Silver-studded Blues (Plebejus argus). However, the metapopulation is probably saved from extinction by the existence of permanently-suitable habitat close to the coast. I have also elucidated an important phenomenon in metapopulations with dynamic habitat: the relationship between patch occupancy and patch connectivity can be obscured by the temporal changes in habitat. This has important implications for the debate about whether many real populations actually fit the metapopulation paradigm because the existence of metapopulation dynamics is often determined by testing the connectivity-occupancy relationship. The simulation model, 'MANAGE', is an important new tool for integrating landscape-scale information, and answering conservation questions, in a field which is relatively new and unexplored

The speed of range shifts in fragmented landscapes

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

The Impact of Landscape Sparsification on Modelling and Analysis of the Invasion Process

Climate change is a major threat to species, unless their populations are able to invade and colonise new landscapes of more suitable environment. In this paper, we propose a new model of the invasion process using a tool of landscape network sparsification to efficiently estimate a duration of the process. More specifically, we aim to simplify the structure of large landscapes using the concept of sparsification in order to substantially decrease the time required to compute a good estimate of the invasion time in these landscapes. For this purpose, two different simulation methods have been compared: full and R-local simulations, which are based on the concept of dense and sparse networks, respectively. These two methods are applied to real heterogeneous landscapes in the United Kingdom to compute the total estimated time to invade landscapes. We examine how the duration of the invasion process is affected by different factors, such as dispersal coefficient, landscape quality and landscape size. Extensive evaluations have been carried out, showing that the R-local method approximates the duration of the invasion process to high accuracy using a substantially reduced computation time

Topographic microclimates drive microhabitat associations at the range margin of a butterfly

Journal Article© 2014 The Authors. Ecography published by Nordic Society Oikos.The habitat associations of individuals underpin the dynamics of species distributions. Broad-scale gradients in climate can alter habitat associations across species' geographic ranges, but topographic heterogeneity creates local microclimates which could generate variation in habitat use at finer spatial scales. We examined the selection of microhabitats for egg-laying by populations of a thermally-constrained butterfly, the skipper Hesperia comma, across 16 sites with different regional temperatures and topographic microclimates. Using models of thermal microclimate, we examined how the association between eggs and warm bare ground microhabitats varied with ambient temperature, and predicted bare ground associations in 287 existing H. comma populations, to investigate the relative impacts of regional temperatures and topographic microclimates on microhabitat use. Eggs were most strongly associated with bare ground in relatively cool sites, indicating climate-driven changes in microhabitat use. The majority of temperature variation between study sites was attributable to topographic microclimates rather than regional temperature differences, such that changes in microhabitat associations occurred principally between north- and south-facing slopes within the same region. Predicted microhabitat associations across the UK distribution of H. comma showed that, due to the large temperature differences generated by topography, most of the between-population variation in microhabitat use occurs locally within 5 km grid squares, with a smaller proportion occurring at a regional level between 5 km squares. Our findings show how microclimatic variation generated by topography alters the habitat associations of populations at fine spatial scales, suggesting that microclimate-driven changes in habitat suitability could shape species' distribution dynamics and their responses to environmental change.NERCUniversity of Exete