About The Fund
Our Mission
CSF is committed to helping communities around the world grow more prosperous, resilient, and independent. Our initiatives are carefully designed to provide tangible short-term benefits to communities, while also seeking to reduce dependency on outside aid. With a primary focus on education and economic empowerment, your generosity provides opportunities for people and communities to create lasting improvements. All efforts of CSF are intended to empower communities to develop strong local economies and educational systems, planting the seeds of long-term development and improvements in living standards.
Guiding Principles
Our mission at CSF is informed by the principles of local action, resilience, and economic empowerment. The principle of local action can be seen in the limited geographic scope of our programs. Rather than helping people access opportunities that may already exist in other parts of their country or the world, we seek to build strong local systems. In this same spirit, our actions are guided by the principle of resilience. We seek to help communities break free of dependence on outside aid and to attain healthy growth that is less contingent on broader economic factors. CSF seeks to economically empower individuals and communities, with measures taken to ensure that initiatives do not create new types of dependence. All activities are conducted with a spirit of cooperation and a deep respect for principles of self-determination and local authority. CSF is apolitical and seeks only to provide opportunities for healthy growth, recognizing that broader issues are beyond the scope of the organization.
Initiatives
Community Seed Fund's initiatives are chosen to maximize the impact of your donations in the communities we serve. With our emphasis on education and economic empowerment, your generosity can plant seeds of hope in communities around the world.
Educational Grants
For many, school money is a barrier to attending school. Tuition, lost earnings, transportation costs, and other financial burdens often prove to be insurmountable barriers towards attaining higher literacy and further education. Through our partnerships with reputable schools and the generous support of donors, CSF works to disrupt generational poverty and illiteracy. In addition to direct financial support to individuals, CSF seeks to help communities improve education at the local level. Our long-term vision is to help communities achieve universal access to secondary education, with special consideration given to local factors and the socioeconomic realities of the community.
Economic Empowerment
We seek to give individuals and communities the opportunity to thrive. Through targeted grants, Community Seed Fund helps individuals to start and operate small enterprises, providing opportunities for economic growth and independence. Additionally, CSF works direclty with communities to improve public spaces, with the goal of supporting local economies. Our investments in the communities we serve help build stable, resilient local economies and are designed to reduce dependence on long-term outside aid.
Financial Literacy
In addition to support for local education at large, CSF seeks to provide targeted financial literacy education. Such education is meant to empower individuals to run their businesses more effectively, to protect themselves from risk and fraud, and to build a culture of self-reliance. Such education is apolitical and is developed with full consideration of cultural norms and economic realities. Consistent with the guiding principles of CSF, the materials provided do not endorse particular institutions or courses of action, they are intended only to educate individuals about local financial systems and how to best utilize them.