The Foundation

Our mission is to reduce polarization and rebuild civic community in Poland. The New Community Foundation is based in Warsaw and operates across the country, both online and on-site

The NCF is a Polish NGO specialized in depolarization solutions for Poland and beyond. We are developing and testing formats of conversation between citizens that help reduce affective polarization and increase a sense of community in ideologically-divided groups. Our approach combines the latest scientific research with robust field practice and agile project execution. For more on our tools and methods, see the Formats section.

Governance

The New Community Foundation was registered in the Polish National Court Register (KRS) on the 15th of April 2020 (reg. no. 0000837602). Its founders were Joanna Zięba, Mikołaj Lewicki, Zuzanna Rudzińska-Bluszcz and Wawrzyniec Smoczyński.

The Foundation has three statutory bodies: the Founders' Assembly which decides on the general direction of the Foundation and appoints its remaining bodies, the Foundation Board which manages the NCF’s operations and the Foundation Council which decides the NCF's activities in a given year and advises the board.

The Foundation Board is led by Wawrzyniec Smoczyński and includes Joanna Zięba and Olga Białobrzeska. Members of the board run the NCF’s day-to-day business together and each member oversees a different strategic project. For bios and more on our team, see the People section.

Funding

In 2024 our projects are financed exclusively with grants, awarded by the Robert Bosch Stiftung, The National Endowment for Democracy, European Climate Foundation, European Commission and Meta. Our budget for 2023 totaled approximately EUR 170.000. For more on our grants, see the Projects section.

Background

The New Community Foundation was launched as a start-up NGO, with the purpose to develop a dialogue format for highly-polarised societies. In 2020-2021 we received two subsequent grants from the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung to develop on-site depolarization dialogues and a third grant from Facebook (now Meta) to transfer the dialogues online. Within this integrated pilot project we have established a protocol for dialogues and gathered practical know-how about theme selection, recruitment of participants, delivery of online dialogues and social media engagement.

Downloads on the NCF and our work

Download 2023 presentation on the Foundation

Download 2023 factsheet on the Foundation

Want to get in touch?

Feel free to use the form to the right or write directly to our general email: biuro@fnw.org.pl. We will respond promptly :)

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