Rede Comuá participates in tables at the 12th GIFE Congress

By Monica C. Ribeiro

From April 12th to 14th, Rede Comuá participated in the 12th GIFE Congress (Groups, Institutes, Foundations and Companies), which had as its theme Challenging structures of inequalities.

On the first day, Comuá's executive director, Graciela Hopstein, mediated the panel Community philanthropy: mobilization of diverse actors for transformation. The panel included Larissa Amorim, from Casa Fluminense; Harley Henriques, from Fundo Positivo – both members of Rede Comuá -; Jair Resende, from the FEAC Foundation; and Vinicius Ahmar, from Instituto Arapyaú.

Table mediated by Rede Comuá during the 12th GIFE Congress. Image: GIFE Disclosure

At the opening of the activity, Graciela highlighted the partnership that the Network has been developing with GIFE since 2018, with the aim of influencing the philanthropic ecosystem through the adoption of community philanthropy and grantmaking, and cited a publication, developed through this partnership and which should be launched this year, on how private social investment can strengthen community philanthropy.

“Community philanthropy is linked to a set of practices. It is necessary to understand the role it plays in the transformation processes. She is not a protagonist, she believes in the power of communities and comes to contribute to processes that already exist in the territories”, defines Graciela.

Comuá's executive director presented the collective work of the Network's 16 member organizations, all grantmakers, and the complexity of community philanthropy that has taken shape in Brazil, which includes thematic funds, foundations and community funds.

“It has to do with the transfer of power, as the movement highlights #SshiftThePower. Change of the axis of power. Access to resources, decision making. For Rede Comuá organizations, it is essential to understand the inequality linked to access and guarantee of rights. Rights are the key to combating any inequality”, contextualized Graciela.

Network launches Territorial Funds Alliance

Larissa Amorim, executive coordinator of Casa Fluminense, presented the work carried out by the organization, which completed ten years in February.

“We debate politics and public action built from territories. And we start from the point that, in fact, there is not just one way to do community philanthropy. We have the Casa Fluminense Fund, which is organized based on a public notice of annual support, guided by the Rio 2030 Agenda. The philanthropy we do today is associated with public policies, with the strengthening of democracy. We also provide direct support to strengthen organizational structures.”

Larissa announced, during the table, the constitution of the Territorial Alliance, created in the context of Rede Comuá from the articulation of seven member organizations: Tabôa – community strengthening, FunBEA (Brazilian Environmental Education Fund), ICOM (Great Florianópolis Community Institute), Baixada Maranhense Community Institute, Redes da Maré, Instituto Procomum and Casa Fluminense. The objective is to promote permanent coordination and exchange of experiences between territorial-based organizations, seeking to develop strategies and reflect on the fundraising challenges for these organizations.

“The Comuá organizations involved in this strategy, in 2021, operated in 174 municipalities, donated R$ 3.17 million and supported 936 projects. To confront structures of inequality, the resource needs to reach the tip, in the territories”, he defines.

The relationship between community philanthropy and different actors

Harley Henriques, founder and executive director of Positive Background, highlighted the fund's trajectory with initial support from the federal government and the pioneering work to combat HIV/AIDS and the importance of what it defines as dialogic advocacy of civil society organizations – which gave rise to important public policies and legislation such as the generic medicines law and the antiviral treatment policy.

“The Positive Fund finances six LGBTQIA+ networks, which encouraged the creation of laws such as social names, same-sex marriage and the criminalization of homophobia. We have international cooperation, donations from foundations and especially from companies, but always with a health or HIV/AIDS focus. Support from companies does not come to the LGBTQIA+ cause. A population that generates a lot of resources for tourism in the country and still cannot get donations.”

Harley highlighted that the challenges are many, and that only by working horizontally will it be possible to break the structures of inequality. “The philanthropy we do is not for anyone specific. It is community, collective. It is important to identify that the leading role lies with those in the field. At Fundo Positivo, the entire team is made up of LGBTQIA+ people. We give spaces of representation and power to these people. It is necessary to guarantee visibility.”

The FEAC Foundation, a member of GIFE, operates in the city of Campinas, in São Paulo, having recently expanded its territory of operation to the Metropolitan Region of Campinas. Jair Resende, Socio-Educational Superintendent of FEAC, reported on the large number of social organizations operating in the city in the 1950s, and how the Foundation brought together this social movement in the territory using donated assets from a philanthropist.

“Our main resource is linked to real estate investment. We use this resource that the Foundation already has to raise more resources from other organizations and companies. Companies based in Campinas, instead of creating institutes and foundations, begin to work with these social organizations that already operate in the territory. We seek, as grantmakers, strengthen these organizations.”

Jair recalled the agility of this arrangement in getting resources to populations in vulnerable situations during the pandemic. “We are the channel where the resources arrive, but we have a network of around 100 organizations in the territory making this resource reach where it needs to go.”

The Arapyaú Institute, also a member of GIFE, has invested in funds and community organizations. Vinicius Ahmar, strategy manager for sustainable development at the Institute, highlighted the initiative involving cocoa in the territory of Bahia.

“The Institute began to operate in a structured way, based on participatory diagnoses in the territory, understanding vocations and what needed to be promoted. In one of these diagnoses, we chose to work in the cocoa chain, understanding that it could develop the region a little more.”

Cocoa cultivation in Bahia, pointed out Vinicius, is predominantly carried out by family farmers in the “cabruca” mode – cultivation in the middle of the Atlantic Forest. “The chain is economically viable, brings social inclusion and keeps the forest in place. Then, when we prioritized this chain, challenges and levers came to us to start the work. But we do not advance alone. We went towards the production of knowledge and promotion, in partnership with Funbio (Brazilian Fund for Biodiversity) and others, to promote and incubate the foundation of key organizations for the territory, such as Tabôa, for example, and the Innovation Center of Cocoa. We identify bottlenecks and encourage organizations and movements to address these bottlenecks.”

Vinicius also highlighted the importance of strategically using philanthropic resources to leverage other investments and the importance of listening to the territory and understanding how it is possible to work together on complex issues.

“The action is to foster a territory that is capable of thinking about solutions for itself. We are there much more as leveragers than someone who is necessary for local development.”

Organizations from Rede Comuá participated in several tables at the Congress

In addition to the table on community philanthropy, other topics were attended by members of the network's member organizations throughout the Congress, such as Latin American philanthropy; grantmaking to overcome inequalities; democracy and intersectionalities of gender, race and climate; productive inclusion and decent work; regulatory challenges of financing and civil society participation.

Representatives from the Brazil Foundation, Elas+, Baobá, Fundo Brasil, Fundo Casa and Instituto Comunitário Baixada Maranhense were at the tables organized to debate these topics throughout the three days of the congress.

Members of the Network participate in several tables during the 12th GIFE Congress – Images: GIFE Disclosure

One of the questions raised for debate was whether philanthropy is prepared for racial equity. Giovanni Harvey, executive director of Fundo Baobá, highlighted three points to be observed in this response: the qualification of the analysis that institutions carry out and how they position themselves based on this analysis; the type of criteria used to make choices; and the purpose of the tasks that philanthropic organizations undertake.

“We need to be clear to understand and separate whether our motivation in philanthropic action is in relation to a cause, a theme or an audience. There is confusion between these concepts. For example, serving black people does not necessarily mean facing racism. There is a confusion between public and cause. Not all care for black people necessarily involves confronting racism. And care for black people can even be an instrument for maintaining racism. This does not disqualify what each of our institutions does in relation to this, but we need to reflect.”

Giovanni highlighted the importance of the criteria and the responsibility of philanthropic organizations regarding this issue: “The donor exercises the power. We as philanthropic institutions have to be responsible, because when we make donations, and make choices, we interfere in the ecosystem and the environment in which social movements are organized. And we need to respect that. The choice is inevitable, but what I question here is the lack of transparency or absence of criteria. And here is an invitation to institutions that work in philanthropy, to take a position. We need to understand philanthropy as an instrument for financing social transformation, but one that can carry out this process with the greatest transparency possible. The transformation will occur through the recognition that the driving force of this transformation is the black social movement.”

Amália Fischer, general coordinator of the Elas+ Doar para Transformar Fund, highlighted, at the table on democracy and intersectionalities of gender, race and climate, that there is no democracy without racial, gender and ethnic equality. “This democracy we have is in crisis, and autocracy has affected us all, everyone. And this didn't just happen in Brazil, but also in other countries in Latin America and Europe. We have to be open to this neo-fascism that is in the world today and investigate why it hasn't died. We are products of coloniality, and little is said about the Holy Inquisition, which burned women, indigenous people, the people we call gypsies, and are the Roma people, for many centuries. Brazil and Mexico stopped signing the Holy Inquisition at the end of the 19th century. This did influence the 20th century in some way. This has to do with colonization, with enslaving people, until today.”

Another point highlighted by Amália is the way women use money, investing in communities and territories. “This is a way of doing philanthropy. We also saw this in the pandemic. Organizations we support used money as they needed, but supported the community on the side, because there was no resource. It is important that we start talking about another logic of philanthropy and social investment.”

“Women are suffering from climate change. When they were homeless and took their children to shelters, they suffered domestic violence. Climate change has direct consequences for women and children, and we have to keep our eyes open for this intersectionality to exist. Don’t just think about conservation and preservation of the environment. In all these spaces there are human and non-human beings, and we have to support those who are protecting us, and in this case they are many of the world's indigenous peoples”, he concluded.

Fernanda Lopes, program director at the Baobá Fund for Racial Equity, also reinforced the importance of this intersectionality: “The climate agenda is necessary, but we cannot make organizations wear climate clothing to seek resources. The real climate issues affect the real assets of the world, the people. This philanthropy, centered on the assets that are people, needs to be responsible towards those who experience the effects of the climate in a vulnerable and unequal way. Until the early 2000s, everything was focused on the environmental, physical impact. Today people start to appear in a place that is still very peripheral. Climate injustices feed and are fueled by social and racial injustices. Everyone suffers from the climate, but there are people who suffer much more.”

Nessa Purper, program manager at Fundo Casa Socioambiental, completed her speech by highlighting the GAGGA alliance (Global Alliance for Green and Gender Action), which brings together the collective power of gender, climate and environmental justice movements around the world. Alliance members provide grants and capacity-building support to women's rights and environmental justice organizations and networks in more than 30 countries in Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America. Fundo Casa is part of the network.

“Climate affects everyone, but it’s different when someone can escape a climate problem

Nessa, Fundo Casa – The climate affects everyone, but it is different when someone can escape from a place by helicopter or has their life buried by a landslide. We cannot talk about climate justice without talking about race and gender. One of the functions of funds that work with socio-environmental justice philanthropy is to challenge power structures. Those who know the solution best are those at the base. This is where the resources need to go, where philanthropy can do more.”