The CUNY 1989-2021 International Fellows
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The CUNY
International Fellows,
1989-2021
North
America Africa
(24) (31)
Latin America
& The Caribbean
(48) Asia & the Pacific
(55)
Western
Europe
(40) Central, Eastern
Europe, & Russia
(38)
N=236
Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society
The Graduate Center, CUNY
The CUNY
International Fellows,
1989-2021
Kathleen D. McCarthy
Barbara Luria Leopold
With help from
Amal A. Muḥammad, Danyel Bilenkis, Varnica Arora
Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society
The Graduate Center, CUNY
October 2021
This report was prepared with generous support
from the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Our deep appreciation to the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation for its
commitment to nurturing community philanthropy around the globe,
and for their generous support for this report.
And our sincere thanks to the foundations that have supported our
International Fellows Program since its inception, including, but not
limited to AMIDEAST (Cyprus), The Atlantic Philanthropies, the
Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, the Compagnia di San Paolo
(Italy), the Eurasia Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Himalaya
Foundation (Taiwan), the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Rockefeller
Foundation, the Stavros S. Niarchos Foundation (Greece), the
Winnipeg Foundation (Canada), and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.
Last, but not least, we want to thank the many alumni and other
individuals and institutions that have provided funding for the
program and specific Fellows.
i
The CUNY
International Fellows, 1989-2021
TABLE OF CONTENTS
FELLOWS IN THE REPORT
The following biographies are for the Fellows referenced in “The CUNY International
Fellows Program and Community Foundations: Learnings from the Field”
Senay Ataselim-Yilmaz (Emerging Leader, Turkey, 2005)…………….………….………1
Akira Barclay (Emerging Leader Diversity Fellow, United States, 2012)….…………….2
Mark Bentley (Senior Fellow, New Zealand, 2012)………………………….……….2
Filiz Bikmen (Emerging Leader, Turkey, 2006)…….…………………………………….3
Carola Carazzone (Senior Fellow, Italy, 2017)…………….………………….………….5
Bernardino Casadei (Senior Fellow, Italy, 2013)……………….…………………….….6
Svetlana Chaparina (Emerging Leader, Russia, 2006)…….…...…………………………7
Alma Cota de Yañez (Senior Fellow, Mexico 2007)………………………………….…..7
Noshir Dadrawala (Emerging Leader, India, 1990)…………………….………...………9
Marwa El-Daly (Emerging Leader, Egypt, 2001)………………………………………. 10
Cathy Elliott (Senior Fellow, United Kingdom, 2009)………………………….……….11
Amelia Fauzia (Senior Fellow, Indonesia, 2009)………………………………………..12
Daniele Pietro Giudici (Emerging Leader, Italy, 2014)……….…….…………...………13
Fabiana Hernández Abreu (Emerging Leader, Uruguay, 2007)…………………….….14
James Magowan (Senior Fellow, Northern Ireland, 2007).……………………………...15
Mariane Maier Nunes (Emerging Leader, Brazil, 2017)………………………….…….16
Bhekinkosi Moyo (Emerging Leader, South Africa, 2003)………………………………17
Olga Nikolska (Senior Fellow, Ukraine, 2019)……………………….………………….18
Marcela Orvanaños de Rovzar (Senior Fellow, Mexico, 2003)…………………………19
Alina Porumb (Senior Fellow, Romania, 2014)………………………………….………20
Shaun Samuels (Senior Fellow, South Africa, 2013)…………………………….……...21
Natalija Simović (Emerging Leader, Serbia, 2014)……………………………………...22
Andrés Thompson (Emerging Leader, Argentina, 1989; Senior Fellow, 2005)……………23
Marion Webster (Senior Fellow, Australia, 2003)……………………………………….24
ii
FELLOWS IN THE PROGRAM, 1989-2021……………………………………….………...26
This table identifies the 236 individuals who participated in the International Fellows
Program between 1989 and June 2021.
ABOUT THE …………………………………..………………………………………..end page
Graduate Center, The City University of New York (CUNY)
Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society (CPCS
International Fellows Program (IFP)
iii
THE CUNY INTERANTIONAL FELLOWS
Fellows in the Report *
Şenay Ataselim-Yilmaz (Emerging Leader, Turkey, 2005)
Şenay pioneered in linking CFs to diaspora funding.
A doctoral student in political science at The Graduate Center when she
joined the Fellows Program, she was also working as the Executive
Director of the Business Forum. She hoped to do her dissertation on civil
society, but could not find many courses on it, which is what brought her
into the Center's ambit. Şenay was invited to join the 2005 cohort as a
Hearst International Fellow, becoming its first participant from Turkey.
She decided to study Turkish diaspora giving in the United States for her IF paper, basing her
findings on extensive interviews. One of her interviewees was Haldun Tashman, a retired
Turkish-American businessman. Tashman had recently created a donor advised fund at the
Arizona Community Foundation, but was unable to use it for grants to Turkey, which inspired
him to reach out to TUSEV (the Third Sector Foundation) in Istanbul to discuss possibilities for
replicating the CF model there, initially with little success.
Şenay's interviews with Tashman laid the basis of her future career. She was already familiar
with CFs and diaspora groups such as the Brazil Foundation and the American India Foundation
through the IF Program, which dovetailed with Tashman's interests.
By 2006 she was advising his new CF-like diaspora organization, the Turkish Philanthropy
Funds (TPF), and became its Chief Operating Officer in 2007. Currently, she is the Executive
Director of TPF, which has become an $18 million community fund.
Her IFP paper explored why Turkish Americans did − and did not − give, providing a
framework for her subsequent work at TPF. Her findings placed a particular emphasis on the
need for transparency, accountability, keeping donors apprised of their grantees and the results of
their support, and due diligence.
Since completing her doctorate in 2014, she has also taught in the Fellows Program and at
Fordham University, and worked with IF alumnae Filiz Bikmen and Rana Celal Zincir
(Cyprus/Turkey, 2009) to bring in Zeynep Meydanoglu (Turkey) as a Fellow in 2010.
Şenay also worked with Filiz and TUSEV to help launch that country’s first community
foundation in Bolu with support from Tashman and on-the-ground work by several other
Turkish IFP alumni.
*
Direct outcomes of their fellowships are identified in blue (bolded text).
1
Akira Barclay (Emerging Leader/Diversity Fellow, 2012)
An expert in giving circles, Akira Barclay was a Diversity Fellow with a
mission: changing the culture of community foundations by making them
more inclusive and welcoming to smaller donors, including minorities.
With more than a decade of experience in fundraising, she had served as
a development director in several New York nonprofits. She was a
Project Manager at Girl Scouts of the USA, managing a million-dollar
STEM program funded by AT&T and had previously managed a $300,000 capacity-building
grants program. As a volunteer at the New York Women's Foundation, she was engaged in their
participatory grantmaking program and organized collective giving groups.
Akira wanted to address the lack of diversity in community foundations head on — not in terms
of their staffs or grantees, but their donors. As she explained, “While most communities in the
United States are made up of a colorful mosaic of race and ethnicity... [their] philanthropic
institutions are not so diverse.” Because CFs have to continually raise new funds, big donors
tend to be most attractive, overshadowing the potential of “grassroots philanthropists” in giving
circles in communities of color.
As a result, CFs lose the opportunity to cultivate African-American donors to make their
portfolios more representative of the community as a whole.
Her paper raised important questions about “who is the community in community foundations,”
an issue that has resonated through many of the Fellows' institutions and careers.
In many ways her approach was more representative of CFs in smaller communities outside the
U.S. like Florianopolis, where Mariane Maier Nunes's “do everything” approach has brought
in donors from a wide swath of sectors and income ranges. It is also closer to the more
inclusive, technologically-driven fundraising techniques that have reverberated across the world
in recent years, such as The Funding Network events and Giving Tuesday.
Mark Bentley (Senior Fellow, New Zealand, 2012)
Mark Bentley has a business background, with an emphasis on
marketing and branding. He was also familiar with startups through his
role in establishing a charitable trust which helped businesses to support
schools when he worked at the in the University of Auckland's business
school.
By the time he applied, he was the CEO of Auckland Communities
Foundation (ACF), the successor to the Manukau Community
Foundation that had originally been set up by the Manukau City Council to fund initiatives in in
South Auckland.
2
Mark oversaw ACF's early development and growth between 2010 and 2013. His task as CEO
was to take advantage of a unique moment in time around the Auckland “supercity” created by
the melding of 7 local governments, and to “pluralize the communities” represented by ACF.
His aim: to build a high profile for the expanded foundation so that it would be a beacon for
donors and a catalyst for the development New Zealand's community foundation movement.
Mark's research at CUNY focused on how to partner with local government for the purpose of
accelerating a CFs’ path to organizational and financial sustainability. He sought to find ways
to shorten the widely agreed upon 7 to 10-year minimum window for achieving sustainability.
In his research, he considered a range of partnership opportunities, which he then discussed
with CF leaders worldwide, identifying a group of practical opportunities through which local
governments could support the start-up and early growth of community foundations. But he also
concluded that government funding needs to be continually reassessed, and phased out as
foundations grow.
His research ultimately provided the rationale for ACF’s renegotiated grant from the
local government − a renegotiation that was required because of the metropolitan merger, a
change reflected in the plural form of “communities” in the foundation's new name.
He also invited Justin Rockefeller and Kevin Murphy to do presentations for Philanthropy
New Zealand’s national conference after meeting them through the Fellows Program.
In 2014, he moved back to the University of Auckland as its Director of Alumni Relations and
Development, and successfully led the University’s “For All Our Futures Campaign,” which
raised $380m the largest fundraising campaign in New Zealand’s history.
In 2016, he joined with 2003 Senior International Fellow Marion Webster to author a paper
“Leadership and the Lifecycles: Reflections on Community Foundations in New Zealand and
Australia” which distilled their experiences and made recommendations on the right type of
management, leadership and governance for new and emerging community foundations.
Filiz Bikmen (Emerging Leader, Turkey 2006)
When Filiz applied to the program, she was the recently appointed
Director of the Third Sector Foundation of Turkey (TUSEV), and was
attending European Foundation Center's Governing Council,
representing TUSEV’s Chairman, Dr. Ustun Erguder.
Filiz joined the staff just as Turkey was in the process of EU accession
reforms. TUSEV was in the forefront of many of the most important
discussions about the sector's role and led efforts for critical nonprofit
law reforms, work that quickly drew her into global networks such as the
International Center on Nonprofit Law (ICNL), where she later served as a board member, chair
and vice chair.
3
Like many International Fellows, Filiz is a scholar/practitioner whose ability to publish
broadened her influence, spinning off publications on a variety of topics, from nonprofit law,
policy and sector dynamics to philanthropy and social investment.
She directed TUSEV 's CIVICUS ‘Civil Society Index’ Turkey study, the country's first
multidimensional research on the third sector, and headed the Turkish research team for Ford
Foundation’s multi-country “Philanthropy for Social Justice in Muslim Societies” project
directed by Amelia Fauzia.
Most Turkish foundations are operating foundations that establish hospitals, universities and
museums, or run programs directly rather than supporting other NGOs. As such, her aim in
applying to the Fellows Program was to learn about grantmaking and develop a feasibility study
for applying the community foundation model in Turkey.
Like Şenay Ataselim, the IF program brought an opportunity for Filiz to develop new
initiatives at TUSEV with donor Haldun Tashman, a Turkish American who was keen to
create two organizations – one on each side of the Atlantic – to promote philanthropy for
Turkey,
On her return, and with Tashman’s support, she designed TUSEV’s community foundation
initiative proposed in her paper, which included a conference under TUSEV 's auspices,
and facilitating the establishment process of Turkey's first CF in Bolu, direct outcomes of
her participation in the IFP. She also served as a Founding Board member of the Turkish
Philanthropy Fund, which is led by Şenay.
She also echoed the mentoring activities and financial support of other “Super Fellows” such as
Andrés Thompson, Bernardino Casadei and Daniele Giudici.
Filiz subsequently moved on to Sabanci Foundation as Founding Director of Programs and
International Relations in 2007, where she created the Foundation's first grantmaking program;
managed a partnership with UNFPA for women and girls; and engaged the Foundation as a
member of Girls Not Brides which was showcased at the Clinton Global Initiative in 2012.
In addition to international consulting assignments focusing mainly on global philanthropy
infrastructure, she currently works as Founding Director and Senior Advisor of Esas Sosyal
(Istanbul), which is the social investment arm of the Esas Holding investment company owned
by the Sabanci family. She also serves as Senior Advisor on Turkey for EMpower Foundation
(NY).
4
Carola Carazzone (Senior Fellow, Italy, 2017)
Carola is the Secretary General of Assifero, the Italian association of
grantmaking foundations that Bernardino Casadei helped to found; she
also chairs the Dafne-Donors and Foundations Networks in Europe
board. Patrik Vesan and Daniele Giudici are among several IF alumni
on Assifero’s board.
Carola is a lawyer specializing in human rights, and an expert in
international development with a strong interest in protecting the rights
of women, the disabled, and children. Her work in helping draft the
United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals committed her to promoting SDGs.
She applied to learn more about community foundations for Assifero and for her work on the
advisory board of the European Community Foundation Initiative (ECFI, which James
Magowan now co-directs), and to enlist more CFs in promoting SDGs in their communities. As
she explained, “community philanthropy is perfectly placed to play an astonishing long-term role
in connecting local civil society and institutions for the SDGs.”
Another focus of her IF research was third sector organizations’ sustainability issues, resulting in
her widely read article on the importance of operating and overhead support, which was
published in Italy’s Journal of Foundations and Alliance. She also continues to promote
community-based CF initiatives and collaboration.
The theme of sustainability echoed through her presentation at the European Foundation Centre’s
AGA in 2019. As she explained, many newer CFs in Southern Italy are taking non-traditional
forms and acting as catalysts for change, rather than simply funding charities. For example,
Messina’s works with local businesses to expand credit for the poor. San Gennaro’s is fighting
violence to restore trust. All are moving beyond a needs-based approach, and Assifero is trying
to amplify their influence.
She has also been working to promote knowledge sharing among CFs in different regions, to
help them pool data and lessons from their programs.
Toward that end, Assifero organized the country’s first community foundation conference in
collaboration with ACRI in November, 2017, where they issued their Guida Sulle Fondazioni di
Communià in Italia, the first guide to Italian community foundations, which Carola edited.
By 2019, delegates from ECFI were attending the national meeting, bringing together
community philanthropy representatives from across Europe. Italy’s fourth annual community
foundation conference will be hosted in Val D’Aosta in 2021.
5Bernardino Casadei (Senior Fellow, Italy, 2013)
Bernardino has been an early and persistent champion of community
foundations in Italy, helping to seed them in Italy's wealthy North with the
backing of the Cariplo Foundation.
His first ventures into the Third Sector involved work for the Italian
committee of the European Cultural Foundation, serving as general
secretary of a foundation for philosophical studies, and coordinating a panel
for the reform of the civil law concerning foundations, after which he won a
Cariplo scholarship to study nonprofits in 1996.
The following year he was hired as a consultant to the Association of the Italian Savings Banks
and the Fondazione Cariplo to introduce community foundations into Italy. He also worked
with banks in Venice and Umbria to create community foundations in their regions, and by
1997, he was heading Cariplo's community foundation initiative.
Seven years later, he also helped to found, and directed Assifero, the association of Italian
grantmakers. When he applied, he was Assifero's General Secretary, a position he held from
2009 to 2013, after which he handed it off to Carola Carazzone.
The CF model he helped to spread was strongly endowment-based, with liberal infusions from
the bank foundations. He applied to the IFP to address a very different set of issues: community
foundations, collective impact, and who is the community in community foundations.
As he explained, “We live in a society that is too complex, in which too often people go
bowling alone.” As a result, there was a growing need “to develop a common vision, identify
common goals, foster concrete collaborations, and provide continuous communication among
all the people involved and the community as a whole... not an easy task.”
His IF paper on “Collective Impact: An Opportunity for Philanthropy in General and
Especially for Community Foundations” was ultimately published as a book chapter in Italy.
And after leaving Cariplo and Assifero, Bernardino implemented his ideas at the community
foundation he helped to create in Como.
He is currently coordinating the Master for Giving Promoters at the Como branch of the
Insubria University, and he is responsible for the development of the Fondazione Italia per il
Dono, a national infrastructure organization created to provide donor services and serve
as an incubator for new foundations, including community foundations. Working with
wealth advisors, notaries and accountants, foundations and nonprofits, their goal is to serve as a
national philanthropic intermediary to help people start their own funds and sub-funds, some of
which may provide the nucleus for new CFs using the Fondazione Italia as their fiscal agent.
He is also working to convince corporations to manage their charitable funds through
Fondazione Italia per il Dono; to develop employee fundraising programs akin to United Ways
in which workers can earmark how their donations are spent; and, to help nonprofits promote
giving by creating their own Agency Funds.
6Svetlana Chaparina (Emerging Leader, Russia, 2006)
Svetlana was working with an organization that was partnering with
Togliatti Community Foundation (TCF) on several projects when she
applied to the Fellows Program to become more of “a specialist on
Community Foundation development.”
Russia had almost 20 CFs at the time, only three of which had
endowments. Founded in the wake of Glasnost with strong support from
the local business community, Togliatti’s was the largest, weighing in at a
hefty $1 million. In Svetlana’s opinion, private donations were “almost
nonexistent in Russia” at the time, so donor motivations were high on her list of proposed topics,
along with endowment building, laws governing philanthropy, board development, and CF
networks.
YouthBanks were of particular interest, since Togliatti’s board was weighing whether to create
one of their own. Her IF paper tested models from the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Poland, Slovakia,
Mexico, Azerbaijan and the Balkans for replicability in Russia, and their potential for training
future philanthropic leaders. Her findings stressed the importance of giving the students genuine
decisionmaking responsibilities, and provided a toolkit for YouthBank development.
When she returned, she used her learnings to develop TCF’s YouthBank program, which she
still champions, and took on new responsibilities as TCF’s Director of Development.
She currently serves as TCF’s Deputy Director.
Alma Cota de Yanez (Senior Fellow, Mexico, 2007)
Alma is the Executive Director of Fundación del Empresariado Sonorense,
AC (FESAC) in Nogales, Sonora, Mexico, a community foundation
established with the representation and endorsement from many of the
state’s chambers of commerce and business professional organizations.
FESAC Nogales mobilizes resources and educates individual and corporate
donors, government agencies and NGOs about philanthropy.
Although she held a business degree from the Technological Institute of Monterey, one of the
country’s leading educational institutions, Alma was a stay-at-home mother for 15 years. Living
in a community where her husband and son crossed the border into the U.S. every day to work
and go to school, she was struck by the number of financial and in-kind donations given to local
NGOs for shared cross-border concerns such as education, economic development, and health
(because “viruses need no visa” as Alma presciently put it), distinguishing it from philanthropy
in the rest of Mexico.
7Alma’s research proposal focused on how Nogales’s cross-border transiency, which undermined
a common sense of belonging. Her foundation worked to bring the community closer together.
Her IF paper focused on FESAC’s RoundUp program, a project with local supermarkets that
encouraged shoppers to round up their tabs to fund a changing roster of local NGOs selected by
the stores. FESAC served as a bridge between the stores, NGO recipients, and donors.
In the process, it broadened the base of local giving by attracting a wide array of donors in lieu of
relying solely on the generosity of the wealthy.
FESAC maintained a low profile in the RoundUp Program to keep the public focused on the
NGOs and their work, providing technical assistance, writing proposals, and increasing their
visibility in the media.
Most importantly, FESAC addressed concerns within the community and among donors and
local government agencies about transparency and accountability. For example, the foundation
offered consumers the opportunity to visit the NGOs to build trust. The program’s success
ultimately enabled FESAC to increase its administrative fees by 4%.
Alma explains the RoundUp program’s value as follows: “In the past four years a total of
$200,000 USD…has been raised locally for local programs.... But the main achievement is not
the amount [raised]…but the ongoing education of the community, the added value of media
visibility, [and the] higher level of transparency perceived by the community and partnering with
local government agencies. This program equalizes giving power in a community where most
people are poor.”
Her IF paper outlined next steps for the RoundUp Program. These included: educating
consumers to become regular donors; creating a 3:1 matching program with local government
and businesses; helping grassroots organizations to build public trust; educating the next
generation to give; and, working with NGOs to increase their donations.
When she returned to Nogales, Alma expanded the RoundUp program to other local and
national corporations and small business willing to promote local philanthropy and created
another initiative on youth street violence modeled on one in Northern Ireland, which she
learned about from another Fellow in her cohort, James Magowan. Alma calls this the
“Copy-Paste-Adapt” approach.
In the intervening years since her Fellowship, she has played a prominent role in a number of
partnerships with groups in Nogales, Arizona, including the Border Youth Tennis Exchange in
2015, the Border Community Alliance in 2013, and ARSOBO (Arizona Sonora Border), a social
enterprise that builds wheelchairs, prosthetics and hearing aids that grew out of a 2008 cross-
border conference on disabilities. Dedicated to promoting a Social Investment model between
the two countries, ARSOBO replaces the more traditional charity-oriented collaboration.
8Alma and FESAC were founding partners of these organizations, and she continues to serve on
their boards – cross-border efforts to bring the community together that she regards as her most
important legacy.
Noshir Dadrawala (Emerging Leader, India, 1990)
Noshir hails from Mumbai, one of the liveliest centers of Indian
philanthropy in the late 1980s. Home to India's wealthy Parsi
community and the Tata philanthropies, it has a thriving array of
philanthropic institutions, ranging from the Tata Institute of Social
Sciences to the National Centre for the Performing Arts.
One of the organizations that emerged in the Tata ambit was the Centre
for the Advancement of Philanthropy, which Noshir directed. He was
(and is) a prolific author who had already published a handbook on the rules and regulations
governing India's trusts.
He joined the second cohort of Fellows in 1990 to study community foundations, United Ways,
and corporate social responsibility, producing a windfall of books and institutions.
Working with his IF mentor, Russy Sumariwalla, who authored the United Way's taxonomy of
nonprofits, Noshir scoured the IRS classification system for information he later introduced
into India and incorporated in his book on nonprofit law.
His learnings about American fundraising techniques produced another book. And his visits to
the New York Community Trust and other community foumarndations resulted in the creation
of the Bombay Community Public Trust, India's first CF, shortly after his return.
Noshir still directs the Centre for Advancement of Philanthropy, providing guidance on legal,
fiscal, governance and related issues pertaining to India's non-profit sector, including
compliance issues surrounding India's Foreign Contributions Regulatory Act and recent
corporate social responsibility legislation.
He is also a trustee of several foundations, and teaches seminars and workshops across India on
legal compliance, governance and CSR, with visiting faculty appointments at leading Indian
business schools.
Beyond India, he has served on several regional and global nonprofit boards, including the
ICNL, the Asia Pacific Philanthropy Consortium, and the Worldwide Initiatives for Grantmaker
Support (under the direction of another IFP alum, Helena Monteiro [Brazil, 2006]). Like many
of the Fellows, he went from heading a local institution when he arrived to becoming an
international authority, board member, and leader over the course of his career.
9Marwa El-Daly (Emerging Leader, Egypt, 2001)
Marwa was a Program Coordinator at the Institute of Cultural Affairs
(ICA) when she applied to study diaspora philanthropy. She was also
finishing an M.A. in Professional Development at American University
in Cairo, and had been volunteering in youth programs for 10 years.
Her IF paper on “Islamic Philanthropy: Institutionalized Giving in the
Muslim Perspective,” looked at the history of Muslim giving; Islamic foundations in the United
States and Pakistan; the potential for replication in Egypt; diaspora giving; and community
foundations.
She underscored the need to revive and modernize different forms of Muslim and Coptic
waqfs with an emphasis on government. She also cited the need for greater access to
information on philanthropy, and to promote diaspora giving and philanthropic activity by
people of all ages, using the internet to build networks.
A key learning from her IFP research was the way in which the Muslim community was
reinventing traditional giving, including online fundraising.
Since then, she headed the Egyptian team in Ford's multi-country study of Islamic philanthropy
that also included Filiz Bikmen and Amelia Fauzia, and completed a Ph.D. at Humboldt
University in Germany.
The IF program introduced her to community foundations, and when she returned, she
created one of the first CFs in Egypt, the Maadi Waqfiyat Community Foundation, in
Cairo.
The Waqfeyat al Maadi Community Foundation is committed to reviving and modernizing the
indigenous philanthropic mechanism of “Al Waqf” by developing projects based on business
models to empower community members and scale up. Based in a rich community surrounded
by much poorer neighborhoods, it brought in volunteers from the disadvantaged communities to
work with those from the wealthier neighborhoods, placing them on the same level. It also
brought rich and poor children together in an art school project, then sold their works at an
event to raise funds for the foundation, turning them into in-kind donors. During the lockdown,
it started a Waqf Factory, which is a home-based production line for families who lost their
jobs, allowing them to work from home. All the machinery was contributed by philanthropists
who believed in this social business model.
Marwa is a Board Member of the Egyptian Federation of NGOs which allowed her to work
with the Ministry of Social Affairs to liberalize Egypt’s laws governing waqfs, which had
been nationalized under Nasser, easing the way for the creation of other community
foundations. She introduced clause 90 for Egypt’s new constitution after the Arab Spring,
which commits the government to reviving and modernizing the waqf model. This opened the
way for a group of policies on waqfs that are currently being discussed in Parliament. Her
10efforts earned her an Ashoka Fellowship, a Synergos Fellowship, and the inaugural African
Philanthropy Award of the African Grantmakers Network in 2012.
Marwa is currently teaching Philanthropy, Innovation and Foundation Management at
American University in Cairo, as well as chairing the Waqfeyat al Maadi foundation. As she
pointed out, when you are running an organization, “everything is a learning.” Like Bheki
Moyo and several other Fellows profiled here, she is sharing her learnings and experience with
new generations.
Cathy Elliott (Senior Fellow, United Kingdom, 2009)
Cathy Elliott was working on the merger of two CFs into the
Community Foundations for Lancashire and Merseyside (CFLM) when
she applied. At the time, many U.K. CFs were dealing with the impact
of shrinking government grants and growing competition for donations
after the 2008 recession.
Like many other IFs, Cathy was interested in questions of
sustainability. She also wanted to explore best practices for good
governance, community leadership, and foundation partnerships and mergers, since she had
been asked the U.K. Community Foundation Network to make recommendations for the field as
a whole.
Her IF paper sketched out different models for successful mergers, based on examples from
community foundations in Canada, the U.S. and the U.K. Cathy became CFLM 's Chief
Executive on her return, a position she held until 2016.
In addition, she joined the board of the U.K. Community Foundations Network, chaired their
Philanthropy Advising Framework, and became a Consultant Trainer/Facilitator for ECFI from
2016. And she has served as a mentor and speaker in the International Fellows Program.
There were a number of immediate outcomes from her Fellowship. Cathy implemented the
findings from her IFP paper by merging the two community foundations under her leadership,
and disseminated them at meetings with United Kingdom Community Foundations and at
major conferences in the UK and Canada.
As she explains “We ended up doing grantmaking completely differently, a new
entrepreneurial way of doing things….”
The Fellows Program also introduced her to Vital Signs, and when she returned, Cathy
spearheaded a local Vital Signs project at CFLM, chaired a nationwide Vital Signs project
for the UK network of community foundations in partnership with Community
Foundations of Canada, and worked with a number of CFs in the UK to introduce it to
the sector there in 2011, initiatives still operating in the UK today. She collaborated with
11other Fellows from Bulgaria, Brazil and Italy to disseminate Vital Signs in their countries,
and helped to introduce it in Germany with Daniele Giudici.
Cathy now continues to work with communities as a philanthropy and social policy advisor, and
holds government sector non-executive roles, including as Board Chair for a National Health
Service (NHS) organization.
Amelia Fauzia (Senior Fellow, Indonesia, 2009)
Like Marwa El-Daly and Bheki Moyo, Amelia is an academic turned philanthropic entrepreneur.
After completing her doctorate on the history of Indonesian philanthropy at
the University of Melbourne, she returned to teaching and her work at the
Center for the Study of Religion and Culture at Syarif Hidayatullah State
Islamic University (UIN) Jakarta. In 2010, she was named Vice Director
of the Center. She is currently a lecturer at UIN Jakarta in the Faculty of
Arts and Humanities, serves as their head of the Magister program in
Islamic History, and directs the Social Trust Fund, which she founded.
Amelia served as the global research coordinator for the Ford Foundation's multi-country study
of Islamic social justice philanthropy, working with Marwa El-Daly and Filiz Bikmen; and had
published extensively on Muslim philanthropy.
She applied to the IFP to study faith-based philanthropy in the U.S., especially how community
foundations with religiously-oriented programs positioned themselves vis-à-vis the state, other
types of faith-based philanthropy, and their own stakeholders.
These questions were particularly timely in the Indonesian context because the fall of the New
Order regime in 1998 opened the door to community-based philanthropic organizations, helping
to make Islamic philanthropy more relevant to modern society. At the same time, the
government was considering centralizing zakat collections.
As Amelia explained, for centuries Indonesia's zakat donations were collected and distributed
by zakat managers. Most were individuals, committees or institutions either working
independently, or with the state.
The passage of the new Zakat Law in 1999, the Foundation Law in 2001 and a new tax law in
2008 all provided charitable incentives, quickening the pace of philanthropic development. An
Association of Indonesian Philanthropy was established (in 2003), and proto-CFs were
developed in various regions of Indonesia.
Her IF paper identified several relevant models for replicating community foundations in
Indonesia. In 2012, she launched the Social Trust Fund, a community-foundation like
organization that works to strengthen inclusive religious philanthropy and raises funds
12for scholarships (including a peace scholarship for both Christians and Muslims),
reflecting her strong commitment to religious tolerance.
Her Fellowship also broadened her understanding of Christian and Jewish philanthropy,
and contributed to the publication of her book on Faith and the State, A History of Islamic
Philanthropy in Indonesia.
Daniele Pietro Giudici (Emerging Leader, Italy, 2014)
Daniele Giudici is interested in best practices, board development and
financial management, and is an important champion of Vital Signs and
of raising local consciousness of SDGS through community foundations.
His position as Secretary General at Milan's Lambriana Foundation, a
private grantmaker housed in the Archdiocese, brought him into contact
with the Fondazione Cariplo, and Bernardino Casadei nominated him
for the IFP in the program's equivalent of the apostolic succession.
Daniele joined his first CF board in 2007, shortly after he began his tenure at Lambriana. By
the time he joined the CUNY program to learn more about community foundations, he was on
three boards, and a member of Assifero (the National Association of Italian Grantmakers),
which Bernardino was heading.
When he applied, most of the Italy’s CFs were less than 13 years old, with endowments that ran
from 5 to 20 million euros, and most were still developing their bylaws concerning
endowments, financial policy and governance, which made the timing of his application
especially opportune. He was also looking for ways to increase local fundraising. By the time
he completed the program, he was strongly committed to increasing community engagement
as well.
The program widened his vision to a far more international perspective, including best
practices from around the world. As he explained, most of Northern Italy's CFs are locally
oriented. His new understanding of the sector “broadened their vision of what was possible.”
It also introduced him to Vital Signs, which became his fulcrum for increasing community
engagement, measuring impact, collecting data, defining community needs, and developing
local partnerships. With his help, the North Milan Community Foundation added a line for
Vital Signs to its budget, and coordinated over 100 workshops to discuss community needs
in conjunction with the report. As of 2021-22, Vital Signs will be the framing structure for
the Foundation’s community engagement activities, with plans to update the data every 2
years.
By 2015, Daniele was involved with all fifteen of the Cariplo-funded CFs. He also sat on
Cariplo's community foundation committee, working with them to foster corporate governance
13best practices and ongoing capacity building programs for CFs’ staff, helped to create Milan's
first CF, and was an Executive member of Assifero's board.
He is currently working to promote SDGs in North Milan by raising awareness of how they are
already being implemented at the local level. As he explained, “We need to get communities to
understand how their activities match SDGs,” by promoting financial literacy, nutrition
programs and efforts to combat domestic violence.
He also collaborated with other Fellows outside Italy, including Cathy Elliott and Mihaela
Giurgiu (Romania, 2014) on Vital Signs, and helped the Trag Foundation in Serbia with its
asset management and investment policies with Natalija Simović (Serbia), another Fellow in
his cohort.
And like Andrés Thompson, Daniele is a Super Fellow, nominating and identifying funders for
Marta Petenzi (Italy, 2017), Alessio Sala Tenna (Italy, 2020) and Federica Corda (Italy,
2017).
He also spread information on the CUNY program and its potential via the European
Foundation Centre’s “Chinese Foundation Leaders Exchange Program” in Beijing and Brussels
(in cooperation with the Stiftung Mercator), in 2017 and 2019.
Fabiana Hernandez Abreu (Emerging Leader, Uruguay, 2007)
Fabiana was a researcher at the Social Policy Research Unit of the Latin
American Center of Human Economy (CLAEH) when she applied to the
IFP, working with Andrés Thompson on a Kellogg-funded project to
strengthen civil society organizations.
She was also exploring the possibility of creating a community-driven
social fund in Colonia.
The puzzle she sought to unravel during her Fellowship was how Uruguay could build more
sustainable civil society organizations in the face of declining social trust. Her goal was to
“promote civil participation by strengthening people´s collective sense of belonging,” and
generate local support for NGO sustainability.
Her proposal drew heavily on Andrés Thompson’s 2005 SIFP paper, underscoring his
distinctions between CFs with a “money approach” and those with a “community approach,” to
test whether the community foundation model was viable for Uruguay.
She ultimately embraced the “community philanthropy” approach focusing on grassroots
involvement and social capital, and hit the ground running when she went back, organizing a
community foundation-like organization in Colonia with local leaders and practitioners.
14Fabiana was a consultant for the newly created Fondo Región Colonia (FRC) from April 2014
to April 2015, and subsequently became the FRC Project Director, a position she held from
July 2016 through March 2017. She also helped to recruit Andrés for the board.
And she used her IF paper as collateral to secure grants from the Kellogg Foundation, the
Global Fund for Community Foundations, and from the Inter-American Foundation to
seed CFs in other parts of Uruguay.
Fabiana was also involved with the Ibero-American Network of Community Foundations, a
group founded in 2013 by several IF alumni to foster information exchanges and strengthen the
field of community philanthropy in the Iberian Peninsula and Latin America. Spearheaded by
SIFP alumna Mercedes Mosquera (Spain, 2009), the Network is now based at the Instituto
Comunitário Grande Florianópolis (ICOM) in Brazil. Fabiana served on the coordinating
committee, along with IFP alumnus Anderson Giovani da Silva (Brazil, 2009); Mariane Maier
Nunes was a board member and facilitator.
Fabiana is currently the People Talent and Gender Equity Executive, and a Project Advisor at the
Chamber of Uruguayan IT Companies (CUTI), working to help nurture and develop talent in the
Uruguayan IT Industry. Working in coordination with various institutions, she’s helped develop
scholarship initiatives, a project focused on capacity building for strengthening public training,
employment, and labor certification policies, and the Gender Equity in IT campaign, soon to be
launched by CUTI and others.
James Magowan (Senior Fellow, Northern Ireland, 2007)
James Magowan is a major presence in European infrastructure
organizations.
When he applied to study diaspora giving, he was the Fund Development
Manager for the Community Foundation for Northern Ireland (CFNI),
where he was responsible for endowment building and strategic
planning.
CFNI was already an international leader in conflict resolution. James’s goal was to generate
diaspora funding for CFNI and for the other members of the Foundations for Peace Network, an
international organization that CFNI had helped to found.
His proposal stressed the need to capitalize on the new types of communications to keep donors
more closely engaged and better informed. As he pointed out, “a new paradigm for diaspora
philanthropy [was] emerging,” making it easier to raise funds across borders. While diaspora
giving was on the rise, donors also wanted to be more involved, and expected a solid return on
their investments.
15James's paper refined these ideas by highlighting CFs' comparative advantage for online and
diaspora giving, particularly their local knowledge and experience, and the ways in which CFNI
was translating its on-the-ground experience in peace building and conflict resolution into
enhanced policymaking.
His findings suggested that simply raising funds to regrant might be problematic, but the
foundation could retool itself to help NGOs educate potential donors about their work, adding
the filter of its own experience and expertise.
His paper crafted a diaspora strategy for CFNI that continues to inform its work.
James remained with the Foundation until 2010, when he became the Coordinating Director of
Donors and Foundations Networks in Europe (Dafne), helping to transform it into a major pan-
European network of national associations stretching across 27 countries.
He returned to CF work in 2018 as a Coordinating Director of the European Community
Foundation Initiative (ECFI), where he is helping to strengthen the community foundation
movement in Europe in a variety of ways, including championing SDGs.
Mariane Maier Nunes (Emerging Leader, Brazil, 2017)
Mariane first encountered the Fellows network when she joined the Ibero-
American Network of Community Foundations (IANCF). A coalition of
23 Spanish and Portuguese-speaking community foundations on two
continents, the network was created by a group of IFP alumni at a
Bertelsmann Foundation meeting.
She became the Executive Secretary for the Network in 2015, leading
exchange programs between community foundation leaders from seven
different countries, and helping members to strengthen their governance issues. She also worked
with the board to design and implement the network’s strategic plans. Mariane became an
IANCF board member in 2016.
Three IF alumni, Anderson Giovanni da Silva of ICOM – Instituto Comunitário Grande
Florianópolis, a Brazilian CF, Andrés Thompson and Fabiana Hernandez Abreu encouraged
Mariane to apply.
Anderson recruited Mariane to manage ICOM’s Centre for Social Innovation in 2014. By the
time she applied three years later, she was ICOM’s Executive Director.
She met Professor McCarthy at the Global Fund for Community Foundations’ ShiftThePower
Summit in Johannesburg, where she was exposed to a broad array of discussions about
community philanthropy in all of its different forms. Inspired by the meeting and her previous
16experiences, she applied to the IF program to study best practices and different types of
community foundations around the world.
She was also influenced by Andrés Thompson’s discussion of the differences between a “money
focus” and a “community focus,” themes that reverberated throughout the GFCF meeting.
Mariane’s focus was on the community side. She held an MBA from George Washington
University, and was comfortable raising money. But she was also interested in social justice, and
the need for community decisionmaking. As she noted in her proposal, “there is a strong interest
in understanding how we can strengthen the community focus in community philanthropy. The
challenges and opportunities surrounding this were at the at the heart of her IF paper, which
was later published in a volume edited by another Brazilian IF alumna, Graciela Hopstein.
It’s at the heart of ICOM’s programs as well, bringing together business, government and
individual donors, experts, and even recipients in highly creative ways.
Bhekinkosi Moyo (Emerging Leader, South Africa, 2003)
Bheki is the Director of the recently created Centre on African
Philanthropy and Social Investment (CAPSI) at the University of the
Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa.
He was still a graduate student in the Political Studies department at
Wits University working on a dissertation on philanthropy and the third
sector in South Africa when he met the Center’s director at an ISTR
conference in Cape Town and she invited him to apply to the Centre’s
fellowship programme.
According to Bheki, the ISTR “encounter was to define my journey today.” At that point in
his career, he wanted to “dedicate my research skills and time to studying the sector,” and hoped
that the program would give him “a broader understanding of philanthropy.” Instead, he became
the quintessential scholar/practitioner.
His IFP paper on “Community Foundations, Social Capital and Development in South Africa”
addressed one of the program’s enduring questions: what creates a culture of philanthropy in
different national settings?
To answer that, he looked at indigenous practices such as ubuntu and stokvels, as well as the Ford,
Mott and Kellogg Foundation initiatives in launching the Uthungulu and Greater Rustenburg
Community Foundations, among others in South Africa.
His conclusions argued for the need to graft community foundations to indigenous practices to
reconceive the concept of CFs within a South African context, building them not only on large
donations but also communal mutual aid – ideas that anticipated many of the newer models of
community philanthropy today, as well as CAPSI’s ethos.
17After finishing his degree, he became a Research Fellow at TrustAfrica, where he coordinated the
first pan-African scholarly research network on African philanthropy, later serving as the organi-
zation’s Director of Programs before moving on to head the Southern African Trust in South Africa.
He also helped to launch African Grantmakers Network’s African Philanthropy Award, the Africa
Philanthropy Network, and became the Director of CAPSI.
In 2017, Bheki received the Global Fund for Community Foundations’ Alekseeva Award for his
outstanding contributions to the field.
The Centre is dedicated to promoting giving by Africans for Africans. Based in the business
school, it is designed to train African scholars to write about African philanthropy and corporate
social responsibility, and help graduates working with high net worth individuals to better
understand philanthropy. There is also a strong emphasis on social justice, and coursework on
community foundations.
Olga Nikolska (Senior Fellow, Ukraine, 2019)
Olga already had a broad portfolio of skills, with years of experience in
both Ukrainian and international nonprofits as a fundraiser, board member,
and project manager when she became a Fellow. She had also trained
nonprofits in fundraising, strategy, communications and community
foundation development.
She was drawn to the IF program because of her work with ISAR
Ednannia’s School for Community Foundations, a support organization
where she has served as program director since 2017.
The school places a heavy emphasis on encouraging CFs to raise local funds. Toward that end,
ISAR provides: 1) matching and challenge grants, many of which are designed to strengthen
relations with local businesses; 2) support activities; 3) opportunities for networking within the
country; and 4) connections between Ukrainian CFs with their counterparts and infrastructure
organizations around the world. The School also translated the Vital Signs manual into Ukrainian
to engage a broader array of stakeholders.
Like Natalija Simović, her proposed topic focused on stakeholder engagement. Her goal was to
produce a strategic analysis of best practices for Ukraine’s community foundations and NGOs.
The core of her analysis focused on CFs’ roles in promoting and developing shared values
among multiple stakeholders —including businesses, the authorities, the diaspora, and the
community itself — by serving as the magnet that brings them together.
She developed an interest in diaspora giving after a seminar session with Şenay Ataselim-
Yilmaz, and another 2019 Fellow, Patrik Vesan (Italy), convinced her to strengthen ISAR’s
18youth initiatives, while learnings from the Buffalo Community Foundation inspired her to
add impact investing to ISAR’s arsenal of ideas as well.
Marcela Orvañanos de Rovzar (Senior Fellow, Mexico, 2003)
Marcela was already actively involved in building Mexican philanthropy
when she joined the inaugural Senior Fellows cohort, with ten years’
experience as a board member, volunteer, philanthropist and
organizational entrepreneur. As a volunteer, she played a crucial role in
helping to develop the Mexico Foundation for Rural Development’s
Rural Women and Families Program.
She also served as a Board Member of CEMEFI (the Mexican Center of
Philanthropy), a major force in the development of Mexican philanthropy
that was founded by Mexican billionaire Manuel Arango. She was President of UNICEF’s
Mexican Advisory Board, and created Procura, a nonprofit training center to bolster the
country’s fundraising skills. By 2018, over 45,000 individuals from Latin America, the US and
the Philippines had taken Procura courses.
After participating in the Rockefeller Foundation’s Philanthropy Workshop (TPW), she helped to
create Mujeres en Filantropia (women in philanthropy), a group supporting women’s initiatives
in Mexico.
This broad portfolio of experience convinced her that Mexico had substantial philanthropic
potential, but “unfortunately it had not resulted yet in a structured giving culture.” Her plan to tap
that potential by developing a community foundation in Mexico City drew her to the
International Fellows Program.
Her proposal mapped out the ideas she wanted to test in the program. The country already had
20 CFs by her count. Her initiative was designed to build philanthropy more generally,
especially in the business community, address urgent social issues, and educate the younger
generations to give in a “professional way.” Ten founding donors would be identified to provide
the seed money for startup costs, comprising the initial Board of Directors.
She was candid about the roadblocks, especially the lack of information and trust, a culture
infused with personalism that made public charities suspect, and a corresponding unwillingness
to relinquish control of personal donations.
Her paper broadened her plan to include corporations that wanted to outsource their
philanthropic programs, providing other donor services, and seeking non-Mexican
matching grants to attract new donors. She also added seminars by international experts,
since “potential donors in Mexico need to listen to successful experiences from abroad…to
realize that there are several…philanthropic models.”
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