It was around the middle of 2016 when the Global Fund for Community Foundations, started to use the hash-tag #ShiftThePower. These are increasingly challenging times for civil society globally with many of the rules of recent decades fast being re-written. Traditional flows of aid are changing and new actors – from China’s emergence as a major foreign donor to mega-philanthropists – are starting to redefine the terms of how philanthropy and development are done, not necessarily for the better. The environment in which civil society operates is changing too, with more stringent statutory requirements and clampdowns on external funding not to mention, in some countries, the out-and-out demonization of the sector itself. Within civil society, conversations around localization and the Grand Bargain are prompting more voices to demand that development be done differently and that the monopoly on power vested in a few institutions is finally challenged. To find out more about the reflections on two years of a hash-tag and the conversations around it, follow the link.
Source: Global Fund for Community Foundations