Community foundations

The diploma thesis introduces the concept of community foundations, the organisations focusing on universal development of a community that promote strategic philantropy within their activity, that also attempt to form jointly a cooperation platform between different sectors and that support nonprofit projects, including the cultural ones. The explanation of different understandings of the concept of community and the approximation of the problemacy of community development helps to comprehend the distinction in creation of those organisations in different contexts, in the American one where such model had been created and in the European context where it was later transferred. The analytic part examines the functioning of Czech community foundations. It concentrates on the activity and management of The Ústí Community Foundation that is the oldest and compares it to the model of a national organisation that focuses on community development, Nadace VIA in our case. The aim is to define possible potential and obstacles that hinder the development of Czech organisations which pursue comprehensive development of a community