Category: News

During the past few months, community foundation program and initiative groups have accomplished significant results when it comes to fundraising, connecting and mobilizing the community.

Having in mind the remarkable progress initiative groups in Stara Pazova, Pančevo and Niš made since the beginning of the program “Our local foundation – community has a say!” Trag Foundation had opened another call for the second round of the program in May 2022. Primary focus of the program’s second phase is to identify new initiative groups who have a potential to develop a functioning community foundation in cities and regions that are still without one. Any group of at least three individuals with history of previous cooperation, community engagement, motivation for volunteer work and awareness of local potentials was eligible to submit its application. One of the most important criteria was history of active engagement and dedication, ability to work in varying contexts and basic idea on how community resources can be best put to use for the benefit of all. The main goal of the call was to gather groups with emerging potential for community foundations and support their growth and development. The call was successfully closed on 9th of June, gathering a total of 27 applications from towns and municipalities placed across the country. Trag Foundation and “Our local foundation” program team members plan to conduct the interviews with most prosperous applicants in the following weeks.

Throughout June, all three initiative groups have been gathering and submitting necessary documentation for official registration, consisting of statute, founding act, decision on members of the managing board and decision on members with executive roles. This process culminated in the official registration of the first community foundation in Pančevo, as the result of long-term investment of time, resources, ideas and motivation. Other initiative groups are awaiting the official decisions on their registration in weeks to follow.

Simultaneously with the administrative process of registration, initiative groups have continued with their fundraising activities, raising more than 42 000 Euros, directed towards promising local initiatives. So far, community foundations have closed a total of 6 calls in all three communities, supporting 49 initiatives and regranting the amount of 48 000 Euros. Community Foundation Pančevo will close their call by the end of June, hoping to support at least 5 new initiatives. Stara Pazova is planning a new Call for projects after the holiday season. All three foundations are opening calls for proposals as they gather a certain amount of money (3 000 euros) that are matched by the Trag Foundation, in order to support fresh ideas and citizen engagement around new solutions to a wide range of community issues in their surroundings.

At the annual National Conference on Philanthropy organized by Trag foundation in November 2021, initiative groups had a chance to present their work within the panel discussion dedicated to local philanthropy and its role and position in general philanthropic infrastructure. Panelists were members of the all three initiative groups, soon to be registered community foundations and session was moderated by Marija Mitrović, philanthropy and partnership director in Trag foundation. Marija and panelists offered the virtual audience some important conclusions, regarding the motivation of the initiative groups to establish the new frontier and take their local work and activism to the higher level; mechanisms and tricks for successful fundraising campaigns and the art of networking and prosperous supporting of the smaller initiatives in their own local communities.

Results of the program implemented in Serbia have drawn the attention of the community foundations operating in South America, more precisely in Columbia and Peru. Their representatives visited Serbia during the organized european study visit and had the opportunity to exchange the experience gained through local work and community engagement with representatives from Community Foundation Niš. These meetings were filled with knowledge sharing and productive discussions, where every participant had a chance to expand their horizons and overview the global impact of united local work. Along with a successful study visit, philanthropy and partnership director, Marija Mitrovic, had a chance to participate on the meeting within the framework of ECFI annual conference in Barcelona, where she presented the most significant results and accomplishments of the “Our local foundation” program implemented in Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

In the past few months, the 5 initiative groups in Bosnia and Herzegovina were making their first steps on the path of fundraising, implementing their campaigns and actively mobilizing the community. Initiative groups from Zenica, Bijeljina, Sarajevo, Birač and Borja region, attended the training on communications and outreach provided by Trag Foundation in Zenica, from 11th to 13th March 2022. After the training, groups launched their fundraising campaigns, which resulted in the total amount of 6 000 euros gathered, and the initiative groups in Bijeljina and Zenica are launching their first Calls for projects by the end of june, hoping to support at least 10 civic initiatives to bring about positive changes in their surroundings by the end of 2022.

The publication What if we can?  is dedicated to everyone who wants to make society or their neighborhood a better place to live in and honestly wondered: Is this even possible? It emerged as an optimistic and daring reply to all dilemmas, misgivings, and doubts about whether it is possible to work for the common good in a long-term, stable, and independent manner. In it, you will find stories of ten civil society organizations from places across Serbia, proving that it is possible and that there are many ways to embark on this adventure using similar paths.

The success stories of these organizations may differ in many details. Still, they all start from the same starting point, the Trag Foundation’s Sustainability Academy program, which each of the mentioned organizations attended in 2019. For more than ten years, through this and other fundraising programs, the Trag Foundation has been supporting all those non-profit organizations that dare to seek support for their endeavors in their immediate environment.

The figures speak louder than words regarding the effectiveness of these programs and their attendees’ fundraising campaigns – by September 2021, nearly 80 organizations from 35 communities raised more than 400,000 Euros, which the Trag Foundation doubled.

Trag made this publication with the idea to incentivize new non-profit organizations to embark on the challenging but rewarding path of community fundraising.

It was developed within the SIGN Up for Impact project, funded by the European Union and co-funded by the Balkan Trust for Democracy.

 

Before you is a publication titled the Go-Ahead SIGN. It is produced as a collective effort of the SIGN Network members, aiming to present, in the most authentic manner, stories of 15 civil society organizations that have completed the Sustainability Academy program and successfully raised funds for various activities and causes within their communities. Stories about enthusiasm, solidarity, sustainability, and importance of constant empowerment of communities are gathered in this publication and represent the product of the SIGN Network, consisting of Trag Foundation from Serbia, Mozaik Foundation from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Fund for Active Citizenship – fAKT from Montenegro, Forum for Civic Initiatives – FIQ from Kosovo, HORUS from North Macedonia and Catalyst Balkans from Serbia. These stories are harvested and published to spark local philanthropy and social responsibility development among relevant actors in their communities. In other words, through this publication, we tend to inspire and empower civil society organizations to return to their surroundings and rely on their local potential.

The Sustainability Academy is one of the programs designed to support non-profit organizations in their path of building long-term partnerships with new local donors, improving their long-term financial planning, and upgrading their sustainability through enhancing their visibility and impact in the communities where they live and work. The program is implemented in five SIGN countries, with the technical support of Catalyst Balkans.

The stories we have gathered represent the developmental paths of the Sustainability Academy participants throughout the years and the course of their fundraising campaigns. Within the past decade, more than 100 civil society organizations from 5 listed countries have gathered over 350,000 Euros from local companies, SMEs, distinguished individuals and citizens.

For over a decade, the work of the SIGN Network and the Sustainability Academy program has been supported by numerous donors, including the European Union, Balkan Trust for Democracy, Balkan Civil Society Development Network and the Swedish International Cooperation Agency, through projects “SIGN for Sustainability”, “SIGN Up for Impact: Philanthropy Development for Stronger Civil Society” and “SIGN for Philanthropy Education and Promotion”.

The idea behind the Go-Ahead SIGN collection of stories is to inspire and encourage all civil society organizations to mobilize their local resources. Even though there is no universal recipe for successful fundraising, these examples of best practices and advice from the source are written in the hope to encourage at least one organization to embark on this exciting and challenging adventure in its community and write the successful local story of its own.

 You can download the publication HERE.

On Thursday, December 9, at 4 PM, we will gather to share memories and reflect on the life of Aleksandra Vesić – former director of the Balkan Community Initiatives Fund (BCIF) from 2004-2009, longstanding Board member of Trag Foundation, persistent researcher, mentor, and activist. Her work is built into the very foundations of civil society in Serbia and the Western Balkans.

The commemoration will be held online via the Zoom platform to allow Aleksandra’s friends and colleagues from all over the region and worldwide to participate. Please register via this link. We will use English and BCMS languages.

Initiatives of groups of citizens from three local communities (Niš, Pančevo and Stara Pazova) which are a part of the “Our Local Foundation – Community has a Say!” programme, together with Trag Foundation, held their second joint meeting in Niš on 15 and 16 October, 2021.

The united conclusion of the meeting was that all three future foundations are successfully raising funds for their programmes to support small projects, and that all three groups are on track to reach the programme goals. In the coming period, they are expecting final fundraising activities, strategic planning and the formation of executive and administrative bodies of the foundations, which is a condition for these informal groups to be officially registered as foundations. The first half of next year is the time for which it was estimated that all three groups would meet these goals.

The meeting included sharing of experiences gained through the implementation of previous activities on fundraising and promotion of philanthropy. This meeting was an ideal opportunity to exchange information on the results of the first competitions for local initiatives in all three communities that were successfully organized by the initiative groups. During the summer of 2021, the citizens of Niš, Pančevo, Stara Pazova and all places and villages which are an administrative part of these cities had a unique opportunity to apply with their projects for a program that offers support in the maximum amount of 1,000 euros per project. In this way, a total of 22 projects (7 in Niš, 8 in Pančevo and 7 in Stara Pazova) were supported via open calls for informal groups and small associations of citizens.

Groups gathered around the idea of establishing community foundations have secured money from companies and individuals from their communities in a variety of ways. Numerous collection methods have been used, with auctions and large individual donations of individuals and companies standing out as some of them. Successful fundraising was additionally helped by the possibility of organizing public events in the open air during the warmer period of the year, and long-term cooperation with business entities was established.

Trag Foundation informed the attendees about the next activities for promoting the concept of community foundations in Serbia and the region, as well as further support and ways to improve the work done on the programme so far. Numerous activities are planned for groups and the idea is for all three foundations to be established during 2022.

The gathering in Niš was also used to visit the projects supported at the first call for future community foundation from Niš. Before community foundations are established, and in parallel with the fundraising and collection of other resources, all groups can expect new calls for support for smaller projects.

Through the program “Our Local Foundation – Community Has a Say”, in 2020, the Trag Foundation supported informal groups from Pančevo, Niš, Stara Pazova and Šabac with the idea to engage their communities, inspire fellow citizens to activism, support their initiatives and raise 15,000 euros for their work, from individuals and businesses, which the Trag Foundation will duplicate and which supported groups will use to support local initiatives in the places where they live and work.

During the summer, a group from Šabac decided to pause activities to establish a community foundation due to other commitments, and new groups of people from this city will still have the opportunity to join the program during the next call of the Trag Foundation to gather new forces to spread the movement of community foundations throughout Serbia.

The Call for the program Our Local Foundation-Community has a say! in Bosnia and Herzegovina was launched in December 2020 and, after two months of intense promotion of the Call, communication with potential applicants, and two online events, Trag Foundation received 60 applications from 41 communities across the country. 

After the Call was closed and Trag conducted the primary scoping of the applications, nine groups were selected for further interviews with the Trag team. These interviews provided the groups with an opportunity to present their ideas regarding the establishment of community foundations in geographical areas that they come from. 

Based on these conversations, Trag selected five informal groups to be included in the program implementation, coming from the following communities: Sarajevo, Bijeljina, Zenica, the region of Birač and the municipalities surrounding the mountain of Borja.

The group from Sarajevo consists of several people of different professional backgrounds, but with the common goal of contributing to the development of their city by providing financial and other types of support to citizens’ initiatives, addressing various important issues that surround them. Harris, Amra, Vedad, Adna, Adi, Irma, Adnan, Elida, Azra, Samra, Andrea, Lejla, Maja and Kenan are members of an informal group who will try to connect people who have resources with those who have ideas on how these resources can be put to use, to ensure the advancement of the community in which they live. 

Bojana, Maja and Vladimir are the people who want to make Bijeljina a better place to live by engaging themselves and others through a community foundation. With their credibility in the community in which they live, the knowledge they have, and the experience in various fields, the three of them plan to include more people in the initiative group aiming to establish this community foundation and engage their fellow citizens through the intense promotion of local philanthropy. 

The idea behind establishing a community foundation in Zenica comes from Amra, Zerina, Berina, Azra, Lejla, Alma and Jenita, who want to connect people from different walks of life and inspire their solidarity and cooperation, as well as joint action to achieve a lasting change. The diverse experiences that they gained so far will serve as a basis for achieving their long-term goal – a community foundation in their city.

Stana, Valentina and Željana come from two municipalities in the Birač region (Srebrenica and Bratunac) and they are motivated to make a positive impact on their community by establishing a community foundation. They plan to further expand their group and work together with people from the neighboring municipalities of Milići, Vlasenica, Šekovici and Osmaci. Like all others, the three of them will aim to develop the community foundation, in the long run, minding its greater resilience to various internal and external challenges, and for the benefit of the communities to which they belong. 

Mount Borja stretches towards Čelinac, Kotor Varoš, Kneževo and Teslić, and each of these four places is represented by one person in the initiative group. Stefan, Marko, Dijana and Djordje came together with the intention of building a community foundation in the region between Doboj and Banja Luka, that will simultaneously connect people and inspire them to solidarity and cooperation, as well as joint action to achieve long-term changes in their surroundings.

These five communities will have the opportunity to establish their community foundations in the coming period, by enabling the informal groups to raise €15,000 from individuals and companies that the Trag foundation will double, thus increasing their grantmaking budget. After this amount is raised, informal groups will formally register the community foundation, aiming to use it to contribute to social changes in the long run. Throughout the process, Trag will support the groups on their journeys towards independent functioning. 

The program Our Local Foundation – Community has a say! was launched in 2019, with the support of the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation. This program intends to support the establishment, full functioning and networking of community foundations in the Western Balkans region over the next 10 years. After Serbia, this program was opened in Bosnia and Herzegovina with the support of the Porticus Foundation. 

From April 20 to 22, 2021, Trag hosted an online Regional Sustainability Academy gathering civil society organizations from the Western Balkans region. These organizations were previously a part of the national Sustainability Academies, conducted through the SIGN network partners in five countries during 2019.

The Sustainability Academy program aims to help the civil society organizations build partnerships with the new donors, improve their long-term financial planning and sustainability by increasing visibility and impact in the communities in which they operate. In the regional part of the program, 32 organizations from five Western Balkan countries took part, gaining the opportunity to learn more about fundraising using traditional and innovative fundraising approaches, know-how on how to empower fundraisers inside and outside their teams, with special attention paid to developing relationships with potential and existing donors, especially in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic that significantly impacted community living and the way CSOs approached volunteers and mobilized resources. The program was led by Jolan van Herwaarden from the Netherlands, with the guest lecturers Robert Osborne (USA), Corinne Hartmann (The Netherlands) and Jillian Stewart (The Netherlands).

The Regional Sustainability Academy covered topics such as creating the Call for support, Online fundraising, Strategic approach to fundraising, Analysis of available fundraising techniques, distance learning and P2P fundraising. Organizations that successfully raised funds for their activities during the previous phase of the program gained additional knowledge needed to continue these efforts and achieve greater sustainability of their associations in the future.

This activity is carried out by the SIGN network, consisting of the Trag Foundation (Serbia), the MOZAIK Foundation (Bosnia and Herzegovina), Fund for Active Citizenship – fAKT (Montenegro), Forum for Civic Initiatives – FIQ (Kosovo), HORUS (Northern Macedonia) and the Catalyst Balkans (Serbia). The event was held with the financial support of the European Union, Balkan Fund for Democracy, Balkan Network for Civil Society Development – BCSDN and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency – SIDA.

Marija Mitrović, Philanthropy and Partnerships Director, Trag Foundation, describes an ambitious programme to develop the community foundation movement in the Western Balkans. In this article she describes the context and journey, highlighting the challenges, and lessons learned on the way. Trag has developed a flexible approach which following research and consultation offers tailored capacity building and financial assistance to selected ‘initiative groups’ and guides them through a process of incubation, consolidation and finally to independent operation. What is most remarkable is their success despite constraints imposed by Covid-19.

Almost two years ago, with the support of the C.S. Mott Foundation, Trag Foundation embarked on a journey to support the development of the community foundation movement in the Western Balkans region. To some it may sound rather uncomplicated – Western Balkans is a relatively small territory in Southeast Europe with colorful landscapes and warm, strong-minded and hard-working people. However, this is also the region of 6 countries, 3 different languages, completely different levels of civic activism, community and local philanthropy development burdened by political, economic and social issues, brain-drain and its share of complicated mutual history. The region itself had only 6 existing community foundations operating in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and North Macedonia, all very different in their nature and ways of working so, after the initial excitement of what lay ahead, the question on everyone’s mind was – where do we begin? What contexts are the most suitable for planting seeds of community foundation enthusiasm? Who are the people we needed to talk to and engage, to get the ball rolling in the right direction?

After months of life on the road, meeting rooms, buckets of coffee and insightful discussions, Trag decided to launch the programme in Serbia first, to see if our approach has what it takes to yield results on the home ground. The Call for programme was launched in late December 2019 and, during a 3-month campaign, we worked towards introducing the community foundation concept to wider audiences and getting people excited and inspired to get involved. Trag Foundation has been active for more than two decades and has, over the years, supported more than 1,500 initiatives in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro with over 14 m US dollars, so we felt quite confident that the programme would attract the attention of the civil society sector. However, we were aware that we needed to step out of our bubble, reach people from other walks of life and spread the word far and wide to encompass any possible target groups we could think of, especially entrepreneurs who were perceived as the go-getters who could open a number of doors and help transform ideas into action.

This was done with support of our sister foundations, existing community foundations, former grantees, business associations, friends in the media, persistent digital and mailing campaigns as well as info sessions held across the country (live events – remember those?). By the due date on March 15th, just a day before the COVID-19 pandemic led to a country-wide lockdown, we’ve received 28 applications from informal groups coming from 17 different communities in Serbia.

At first we were puzzled – should we wait for the pandemic to be over and visit each of the 9 shortlisted groups or keep the momentum going by transferring everything online? You need not guess dear reader, it soon became apparent that the pandemic is not just a short glitch in the matrix and after 2 weeks of interviews, dozens of questions, frozen connections and many ‘can-you-hear-me’, we decided to select 4 groups coming from Pančevo, Niš, Šabac and Stara Pazova to go ahead with the programme, based on their composition, knowledge of their community, experience and skills, availability of resources and endless enthusiasm to face all the inevitable challenges and come out on top.

The programme itself was designed to roll out in 3 stages – the incubation phase, in which the selected informal groups would receive accompaniment from Trag and external experts to build their team, acquire knowledge and skills necessary to become grantmakers, local resource mobilizers and community movers and shakers and meet the challenge of raising €15,000 from individuals and businesses in their communities that Trag would match, providing them with their first grantmaking budget aimed at supporting local initiatives in their surroundings. For this phase, Trag dedicated a €3,000 budget for each group, giving them some space to set themselves up and running, and conduct their initial fundraising efforts. Second phase is the so-called consolidation phase, in which the informal groups would evolve into established community foundations and work to support the local initiatives and raise additional funding for their grantmaking whilst being further strengthened in terms of their internal capacities and supported with a general purpose grant from Trag. The third phase is envisaged as the phase of independent work, with well-established community foundations working on their own and Trag cheering in the background and providing additional sets of wings where necessary.

We began our joint journey with workshops on community foundation concepts, mapping and needs assessment exercises whilst devising their plans of work. The four groups vary in size, composition, community contexts, available resources and capacity building needs so the accompaniment plans were tailor made, to address each group individually but also collectively, to spark their sense of belonging to a wider movement. This process was much aided by our friends from Romania – Alina Porumb as the programme’s key expert and community foundations from Timisoara, Ramnicu Valcea and Banatul Montan, who took time to share their experiences and answer a number of questions and dilemmas our groups faced as they moved forward.

As it always goes in life, plans are there to be changed so, as the COVID-19 pandemic progressed and shook all aspects of our personal and community lives, Trag and the initiative groups had to shift their approaches numerous times to effectively address these contextual upheavals. One thing was obvious – given that the civil society in Serbia was prompt in response to the effects of the pandemic, the need for community foundations proved to be greater than ever. Not only did communities need someone to take on the leadership role, connect all the stakeholders and address the burning issues without lengthy due diligence processes and complicated procedures, they also need someone who would establish the system to mitigate similar challenges and help communities become more resilient in the future.

With that in mind, Trag changed its accompaniment approach, putting more emphasis on strengthening initiative groups’ internal capacities and building their leadership role in the community, whilst facilitating their decisions on when to best start their fundraising campaigns, in terms of momentum, their internal capacities, available resources and fundraising techniques that can be applied. With the support from Mott, we also changed our grantmaking scheme, providing a matching grant for every €3,000 that they raised with an additional €1,000 of general purpose funding, to cover the administrative and human resources costs arising from their newly acquired grantmaking role. This was also another mechanism set to mitigate negative circumstances of COVID-19 and provide more opportunities for the groups to fundraise, mobilize and position themselves as future community foundations in their respective communities. This really got the initiative groups going and they devised a number of interesting strategies to attract donors without much face to face engagement. Thus far, Niš has surpassed its first fundraising goal of €3,000 and Pančevo is less than €50 from the finishing line. Trag is now helping them shape their grantmaking calls and eagerly awaiting to see what kind of local initiatives get to be supported through this programme first.

As we progress further, Šabac and Stara Pazova will also intensify their fundraising efforts and we will continue with our tireless support, involving not only Trag staff but also resources coming from ECFI and community foundations in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Romania and Hungary. If your community foundation or community foundation support organization is interested to get involved – by all means, get in touch, let’s tighten our ranks and make these challenging times a bit more magical! Until then, enjoy the video presenting the initiative groups and stay tuned for more news on successes in Serbia and the results of the Call for programme in Bosnia and Herzegovina that was just closed with 60 applications coming from all around the country! Also, feel free to contact us for more information on marijam[at]tragfondacija[punkt]org. We would be happy to network and share.

TRAG FOUNDATION’S STRONG INVESTMENT IN STRENGTHENING LOCAL COMMUNITIES

In 2019 Trag Foundation, with the support of the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, launched “Our local foundation – community has a say!” program with a long-term goal to encourage and support the establishment of community foundations and the community foundation movement in the Western Balkans region (Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Kosovo and Albania). The Call for Program was first published in Serbia, where Trag Foundation selected four informal groups, from the cities of Niš, Pančevo, Šabac and Stara Pazova to participate in this program.

WHY DO WE BELIEVE IN COMMUNITY FOUNDATIONS?

Since our establishment, Trag Foundation has been keenly following the community foundation movement around the world, concluding that it represents a good way to gather people around a positive change. In our opinion, community organizing in the smallest local units – be it buildings, neighborhoods or towns – is necessary for restoring trust in the ability of community members to change their environment and thrive. However, community organizing needs to have sufficient space and resources to make these changes possible and our practice shows that community foundations can be an agent of this change. They have the potential to open up spaces, create possibilities and directly support the implementation of different community-let initiatives. They can build bridges in divided communities, establish common ground for polarized groups and inspire people to take ownership of the issues that surround them and contribute to their successful resolution. This can reaffirm their sense of community belonging, build more trust and cooperation among different stakeholders on the local level and increase their individual and joint credibility.

Community foundations are an important part of the philanthropy infrastructure and can enhance the culture of giving on the local level, thus improving their effectiveness and impact on the communities that they serve. As an illustrative example, throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, community foundations proved to be very agile and provide essential impetus to local initiatives to support the front-line services and most vulnerable citizens in their surroundings. In Romania, Association for Community Relations and 17 community foundations across the country raised close to 2 million Euros in essential medical equipment and emergency aid to vulnerable groups. In Serbia, with the support of the Trag Foundation, Foundation Front from Novi Pazar developed a solidarity coordination web platform where citizens in the heavily-affected Sandžak region received information regarding possibilities for support while, at the same time, individual and corporate donors received timely updates on community needs. In a short time, and with support from the informal Sandžak Solidarity Network, this platform managed to recruit over 100 active volunteers and raise over 80.000 Euros that were quickly distributed where necessary. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, Tuzla Community Foundation supported numerous initiatives, ranging from securing protective equipment to health workers, securing baby equipment, distributing food for socially disadvantaged citizens to enabling students to follow online classes.

These are just a few examples of community organizing being more rapid, agile and needs-based than any large system paralyzed by its own due diligence and compliance mechanisms. With this in mind, we embarked on this journey, striving to support the establishment of 15-20 community foundations in the Western Balkans region until the end of 2028. These community foundations will aim to contribute to greater social cohesion and inclusion, because we believe that this is the only way for philanthropy to be a transformative force of common good and achieve its social promise to fulfill true community potentials.

HOW IT ALL BEGAN

After scoping visits to all countries included in the program, Trag Foundation decided to open the Call for Initiative groups in Serbia first. The Call was launched at the end of 2019, inviting informal groups of a minimum 3 people from the same community to apply for a chance to participate in the program. During the 2.5 months of intense promotion of the program and after 7 info sessions held throughout Serbia, Trag received a total of 28 applications from 17 communities across the country. After the initial selection process, 9 groups gained the chance to share their ideas with the Trag team. Finally, Trag selected 4 initiative groups from Niš, Pančevo, Šabac and Stara Pazova to go through the incubation process and hopefully establish the community foundation upon the completion of their accompaniment program and fundraising campaigns that are already well underway.

WHERE ARE WE HEADING NEXT?

The selected initiative groups used the initial months of their work to map potential volunteers and resources – including skills and knowledge – in their community. They all began to raise 15.000 Euros each from individual and corporate donors in their surrounding, as well as from diaspora. Every Euro that they raise will be doubled by Trag, leading to a total budget of 30.000 Euros for provision of support to local initiatives.

Although the COVID-19 pandemic significantly affected all aspects of our daily lives, “Our local foundation – community has a say!” program remains adaptive, responsive and on a continuous lookout for new ways to operate in changing contexts and environments. The next step is to launch the program in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where we will start looking for new initiative groups at the end of October 2020. We remain committed to establishing community foundations in other countries of the region so, should you have any questions, need additional information or just want a friendly chat about their possible establishment in your surroundings, do not hesitate to contact Marija Mitrović (marijam@tragfondacija.org) and Vjekoslav Vuković (vjekoslav@tragfondacija.org) anytime.

Trag Foundation is a regional foundation that encourages and supports the active engagement of citizens in local community development for the last twenty years. We gather people who believe that small changes can make a big difference and desire to be initiators of positive change in their communities. Since our establishment, we have supported over 1500 successful projects with over 13 million Euro across Serbia and the Western Balkans region.