Jenny Hodgson shares global insights ahead of Forum
In this Q&A Executive Director of the Global Fund for Community Foundations Jenny Hogdson shares some learnings from more than 20 years in the post as she prepares to travel to Australia for the National Community Foundations Forum 2026.
- The Possible Now conversation in community philanthropy is developing in response to funding cuts in international development and the multiple global economic, political and environmental crises. It also speaks to the Forum’s theme of ‘Meeting the Moment’. Can you tell us a little more and how you might unpack it further at Forum?
Indeed, the gravity and urgency of global crises – plus the collapse of global aid – certainly provide part of the background for Possible Now. The extent of the problems we face – all over the world – are so complex they can feel overwhelming. And yet, in quiet spaces, often at the edges of the mainstream and deep in communities, people are not standing by passively waiting for someone to come and solve them. Instead, they are building their own alternative systems that work, that are based on trust, connection, local assets and collective power.
Possible Now is a global invitation to engage in authentic and radical reimagining with unabashed curiosity and hopeful energy, to ask new questions and to explore new edges, unusual alliances and new configurations of allies in order to be able to build something new together. If we are really to “meet the moment”, we need to start with ourselves and to recognize the power and importance of radical experimentation and collective power. Forum provides a wonderful opportunity both to stimulate some of those essential conversations but also to identify potential gardeners and caretakers of this new “garden of alternatives” and find ways to translate ideas into concrete action.
- What are you looking forward to at this Forum and do you have any reflections since attending last time?
My overwhelming memory of the previous Forum was that of an extraordinary sense of good energy. I was joined at Forum by some of our partners from Indonesia, the Philippines and Nepal, and we were all struck by how similar some of the conversations that took place were to those happening in other contexts. Often, conversations in philanthropy can end up heavily focused around money, and big money at that. But the real resource in all our work – and this came across strongly at the last Forum – is people, communities and our shared humanity.
This time, I’ll be joined again by a global group, including the GFCF board and colleagues from the UK, Nepal and Kenya. I’m looking forward to the magic that happens when people come together from different contexts and experiences and find resonance in each other. For the GFCF too, being in Australia at Forum is one step on the road to the next #ShiftThePower Summit, which will be held in Kathmandu, Nepal on 2-4 December, at which I hope we will have a strong Australian and New Zealand contingent!
- Ian’s suggested that the community foundation network in Australia is the fastest growing he’s seen in the world (after the regulatory changes last year). We are at an inflection point of real energy and growth. What’s a key learning from your extensive experience in other countries of how we can turn this momentum into a long-lasting power-shifting movement?
It’s been amazing to see how quickly things have evolved in Australia in terms of the community foundation movement over the last couple of years. It provides a larger global lesson to us all that we don’t always need to make do with the structures that came before, and that the right combination of political will, imagination and a window of opportunity can indeed create the conditions for new things to emerge.
Over time, new structures start to mature and to settle and, we know that they can easily shift from being nimble, “edge actors” to becoming more established parts of the landscape. We can see that in other parts of the world, where institutions whose origins lay in the ambitions and aspirations of activists, movement builders and dreamers can, over time, become weighed down by structures, policies and a general “bureaucratization”. This is all part of the journey of “institutional development” and is, to some extent, natural and inevitable. Continuing to stoke that flame of purpose, of values such as equity and justice, of a vision of a good society and so on, therefore, becomes more important than ever. It’s not the job of an individual or even a single institution. It lies in the spaces between our structures and in the generosity of movements. It is the soil and the root system of the garden that is Possible Now.
Read Jenny’s full blog on the Possible Now conversation on the Global Fund for Community Foundations.