Cluj Community Foundation believes in a community with a vision, which generates positive and sustainable change, rich in diversity but united in the commitment to work together in order to create an active, inclusive, generous and prosperous Cluj. Efforts to achieve this goal began in 2008, with Cluj setting up one of the first community foundations in the country.
The values that guide the Foundation’s mission are transparency and professionalism, and the team seeks to support projects whose long-term impact will bring positive change in the community. The number of projects and scholarships awarded to young people in Cluj bears testimony to that. Until 2016, Cluj Community Foundation offered 435 grants to local initiatives and awarded 267 scholarships to young people, the total value of their work amounting to around 2.17 million lei.
Since 2008, each year was marked by projects such as Swimathon, YouthBank Fund, Donor Circle, Collegium Fund – Excellence in Education, or by scholarships for young people, some of which have since become a tradition. In addition to this, new projects were also carried out each year. In 2011, the U Fund for Cluj was established, which was a partnership between the Foundation and Football Club “Universitatea Cluj” to raise funds to support community development projects and to provide scholarships to young athletes.
In 2012, within the framework of the pilot program Social Entrepreneurship for Youth, the Cluj Community Foundation financed three social entrepreneurship initiatives. The youth were also supported in 2013 through several scholarships awarded by the Collegium Fund – Excellence in Education, which was at its third edition in 2013. In the same manner, 24 scholarships were awarded in 2014 to young people in the community.
Cluj Community Foundation believes that each citizen, initiative group or company with local interests can contribute to the transformation of the city into the place they dream of. Thus, events such as COM’ON Cluj-Napoca have been organized over the years, where members of the community were invited to share their vision about Cluj and to sketch the future of the city through a participatory budgeting exercise.
The Foundation managed to mobilize the community around local initiatives. In November 2016, Cluj CF organized the 10th Donor Circle, which raised over 9,000 lei for two projects aimed at supporting mothers living near the city’s landfill and to change for the better, through sport, the lives of 20 children from the “Traian Dârjan” High School, who also live in the Pata Rât community, near the landfill.
In 2018, FC Cluj marked its 10 year anniversary by bringing back Swimathon, the event that showed, for the first time, the force that the people of Cluj have when they unite. During its ten years of activity, FC Cluj managed to support 443 initiatives and projects through its grants, offering 2,791,108 lei.