Community development — the process by which communities build their capacity to address shared challenges and shape their own futures — is both a practice and a funding area. In Australia, community development philanthropy ranges from neighbourhood infrastructure grants to large-scale place-based investments transforming disadvantaged areas. Understanding the community development funding landscape and what effective grantmaking in this space looks like helps funders and community organisations work together more effectively.
Community development is not a programme — it's an approach. Community development:
- Builds on community strengths and assets rather than focusing on deficits
- Engages community members as active agents rather than passive recipients
- Addresses the conditions (social, economic, physical) that enable wellbeing
- Builds relationships, trust, and collective capacity that persist beyond any single project
- Takes a long-term view — change takes years, not months
This approach is distinct from service delivery (which provides services to individuals) and from advocacy (which seeks policy change). Community development works at the community level to strengthen the social fabric and collective capacity for action.
Place-based philanthropy — concentrated, sustained investment in a specific geographic area — is an increasingly prominent approach in Australia. Major place-based initiatives include:
Western Sydney initiatives
Foundation partners investing in Western Sydney communities — Campbelltown, Fairfield, Liverpool — have developed long-term, collaborative investment approaches addressing employment, education, and community wellbeing.
Logan Together (QLD)
Logan Together is a large-scale, community-led initiative in Logan City (southeast Queensland) bringing together multiple funders, government agencies, and community organisations around a shared vision for children's wellbeing.
Maranguka Justice Reinvestment (NSW)
Maranguka in Bourke (NSW) is an Indigenous-led justice reinvestment initiative, demonstrating how community-controlled, place-based approaches can reduce crime and improve wellbeing in Aboriginal communities.
Hume Riverina Community Foundation (VIC/NSW)
Regional community foundations supporting local community development in the Hume and Riverina areas.
Community infrastructure
Community halls, neighbourhood centres, parks, playgrounds, libraries, and sports facilities are the physical infrastructure of community life. Capital grants for community infrastructure enable the gathering spaces where community life happens.
Community organisations
Local community organisations — residents' groups, neighbourhood associations, cultural organisations, social clubs — are the building blocks of social capital. Operational grants that support these organisations sustain the connective tissue of community life.
Community leadership development
Community leaders — formal and informal — shape how communities respond to challenges and opportunities. Grants for community leadership development programmes invest in the human capital of community change.
Social enterprise and local economy
Community-based social enterprises — local businesses with social purposes, community-owned enterprises, employment programmes — build economic activity and employment within communities. Grants for social enterprise development address economic as well as social community development.
Community planning and engagement
Helping communities understand their own assets and challenges, develop shared visions, and plan for their future builds capacity for collective action. Grants for community planning processes, participatory mapping, and community consultation build agency.
Intergenerational connection
Social cohesion across generations — connections between older adults and young people, between established residents and newcomers — is a key dimension of community health. Grants for intergenerational programmes, community events, and shared spaces build these connections.
Long time horizons
Community development produces results over years, not months. Funders who invest in community development need patience and multi-year commitments. Annual project grants rarely catalyse meaningful community change; 3-5 year investments begin to create the conditions for change; decade-long commitments enable transformation.
Community-led design
Community development done to communities — rather than with and by communities — doesn't build community capacity. It may deliver services, but it doesn't build the agency and collective action that are the markers of genuine community development. Grants should support processes that put community members in the lead.
Listening before funding
Effective community development funders invest time in understanding community contexts before designing grant programmes. What does this community identify as its strengths? What are its priorities? What has been tried before? This listening prevents funding what funders think communities need rather than what communities actually prioritise.
Collective impact and collaboration
The most significant community development outcomes require multiple funders working together — aligning investment, sharing learning, reducing transaction costs for community organisations, and combining resources toward shared goals. Collaborative philanthropy is more effective in community development than individual foundation investment.
Tahua's grants management platform supports community development funders and community organisations in Australia — with place-based portfolio management, social capital outcome measurement, community organisation relationship tracking, and the tools that help funders invest effectively in stronger Australian communities.