Leveraging local wisdom: The role of community knowledge in the strategic direction of BC’s community foundations
| dc.contributor.author | Tom, Vincent Eric | |
| dc.contributor.supervisor | Thiessen, Susanne | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2026-05-26T20:24:04Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2026-05-26T20:24:04Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2026 | |
| dc.degree.department | School of Public Administration | |
| dc.degree.level | Master of Arts MA | |
| dc.description.abstract | Community foundations (CFs) in British Columbia are uniquely positioned as place-based philanthropic institutions whose mandates depend on their ability to understand and act on community knowledge (CK). Yet how senior CF leaders conceptualize CK, access it, and mobilize it through organizational decision-making structures remains under-researched in the Canadian philanthropic literature. Using a constructivist grounded theory methodology, this study conducted ten semi-structured interviews with senior leaders across established BCCFs to examine how CK informs strategic direction and decision-making. The analysis of these interviews produced five categories describing CK’s movement through the CK: cultivating informal access, managing multiple knowledge systems, navigating board dynamics, asserting strategic agency, and returning knowledge through reciprocity. Bringing together these categories supports an emerging theory, the Stewardship of Relational Knowledge, which articulates CK mobilization as a cyclical, non-linear process of stewardship conditioned by institutional power. The study concludes that a CF’s legitimacy as a community actor is not granted by its endowment size or grant programs but earned through its stewardship of the knowledge entrusted to it by the community. | |
| dc.description.scholarlevel | Graduate | |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://hdl.handle.net/1828/23945 | |
| dc.language | English | eng |
| dc.language.iso | en | |
| dc.rights | Available to the World Wide Web | |
| dc.subject | community foundations | |
| dc.subject | community knowledge mobilization | |
| dc.subject | community philanthropy | |
| dc.subject | constructivist grounded theory | |
| dc.subject | MACD | |
| dc.subject | philanthropic institutions | |
| dc.subject | British Columbia | |
| dc.subject | philanthropic decision-making | |
| dc.title | Leveraging local wisdom: The role of community knowledge in the strategic direction of BC’s community foundations | |
| dc.type | Thesis |