Community foundations enter the impact investing room for the first time at Latimpacto
Community foundations reached the impact investing stage for the first time in September 2026. That month CIAF, the Comunidad Iberoamericana de Aprendizaje sobre Filantropía y Fundaciones Comunitarias, attended the Impact Minds conference that Latimpacto held in Manaus. Founded in 2020, the network links support organisations from nine countries. Comunalia alone supports seventeen community foundations in Mexico, and IDIS supports fifteen in Brazil.
The case made in Manaus is about where funding decisions come from. Large funders often pay outside experts to learn from scratch what local boards, drawn from the communities themselves, have known for years. Vivian Calles Villarreal of Landa Zambrano Asociados writes that the shared power and local trust impact investors are chasing already exist. Capital has overlooked them only because many funders have never heard of them.
Source: Alliance Magazine · October 14, 2026