About ZGF

The Zambian Governance Foundation for Civil Society (ZGF) was registered in 2009 as a company limited by guarantee to enhance government accountability and transparency to poor and vulnerable sections of society through the development of the civil society sector in Zambia. ZGF’s mission was to strengthen the role of civil society in pro-poor policy engagement, by increasing access to capacity enhancement resources, tools and other support mechanisms. our efforts were directed towards empowering poor and vulnerable people (men and women) to engage effectively with government and demand greater government accountability and responsiveness to their needs. Since 2010, we supported 163 organisations, ranging from well-established civil society organisations (CSOs), emerging CSOs to community-based organisations across all provinces of Zambia, through a total of 213 grants. We built relationships with an estimated 400 CSOs over the past 12 years, including grantees and beneficiaries that benefitted from training and scoping exercises, organisational capacity assessments, learning and information sharing events. In 2017, community philanthropy emerged as a new pillar of work following exposure to the concept of community philanthropy promoted by the Global Fund for Community Foundations in 2016. We considered the promotion of local philanthropy a natural progression from our past engagement and experiences with CBOs. With this addition to our programme, we mutated from a dedicated civil society support organisation to one that also works directly with communities. Since then, we have been active in two strands of work, namely supporting civil society development - an area ZGF is most known for – and community philanthropy, the new component added to our programme portfolio since 2017. Today, ZGF is working in fifteen communities located in the urban and peri urban areas of Lusaka, and in rural communities in Chisamba, Chibombo, Rufunsa and Luangwa districts.