Community foundation

Community foundations can directly or indirectly participate in the creation of programs for economic and social development of a municipality or an ATC, which in some countries are mandatory for each municipality, for example, in Slovakia ^[1].

Local community funding is the collection and management of financial resources by appropriate funds (targeted pools of financial resources) at the level of a particular community to further promote local development or support targeted community initiatives ^[2].

This is one of the simplest and at the same time quite effective tools for ensuring sustainable and continuous economic, social and cultural growth, which is available at the local level. It is particularly interesting and attractive in terms of the relatively low costs of its creation (launch) and the amount of effort required to further attract financial resources. Funding by local communities is an important accumulative financial mechanism for their strengthening, and it is this type of financial resource mobilization and subsequent financing that allows local communities to actively participate in addressing their own needs and attract resources to implement projects that improve regional life and develop the economy, infrastructure, education, culture, etc.

In physical terms, community funding is a set of activities of local charitable foundations ^[3], which is based on cooperation between local governments, regional businesses, and foreign donors.

The successful development of territorial communities in the economic, social, and environmental spheres directly depends on the adequacy of funding for relevant projects and programs, which usually aim to:

- sustainable development of local communities

- strengthening the social sphere;

- creation of new jobs;

- improvement of local infrastructure;

- environmental sustainability of communities;

- innovative technologies;

- startups;

Given the fact that funding for the above areas from the state or local budget is insufficient in most cases, there is almost always a need for additional sources of support for priority areas on the ground, which is the purpose of community funding.