A Global Conversation About Community

by Jasmine Hall Ratliff

Last month, I traveled to Salzburg, Austria for a convening hosted by Salzburg Global and Windward Fund focused on the evolving role of intermediaries and fiscal sponsors across Europe and the United States. I attended as a Windward Fund board member, but throughout the conversations I was also thinking deeply about Build Missouri Health, our partners, and the communities we serve across Missouri.

The convening brought together philanthropic leaders, fiscal sponsors, collaborative funds, and intermediary organizations from across Europe and the U.S. to explore how this work is changing and what communities need from the sector in this moment. While the legal and philanthropic landscapes differ from country to country, many of the themes felt remarkably familiar: communities facing interconnected challenges, grassroots organizations being asked to do more with less, and growing recognition that strong ideas need strong infrastructure to survive and grow.

One of the clearest takeaways for me was how intermediary work is evolving globally from transactional to relational. Increasingly, fiscal sponsors and intermediaries are doing far more than moving money from one place to another. They are helping projects build capacity, providing operational infrastructure, supporting collaboration, reducing barriers to funding, and creating ecosystems where organizations, funders, and communities can learn from one another and move work forward together.

Nurturing An Ecosystem

During one of the opening conversations, a participant shared a metaphor that has stayed with me since returning home: intermediaries functioning like a coral reef. Coral reefs are living ecosystems made up of many interconnected parts that rely on one another for survival and strength. In many ways, that’s what strong intermediary work can look like — not simply housing projects or distributing funds, but creating the conditions for relationships, innovation, protection, and collective growth.

Intermediary work is fundamentally about connection. It’s about building ecosystems where organizations, funders, and communities can support one another, adapt together, and create stronger conditions for long-term community health and resilience.

Why This Work Matters Right Now

One of the more honest and important conversations throughout the convening focused on the increasing pressure facing frontline organizations and grassroots movements across both Europe and the United States.

Participants spoke openly about how current national and state administrations in many places are making justice-focused and advocacy work more difficult, and at times riskier. Physical and digital safety concerns are growing for some organizations. In certain environments, grassroots organizers and frontline groups are facing increasing threats, restrictions, and scrutiny even as communities continue demanding action and support.
At the same time, many participants discussed a growing hesitation within philanthropy to fund some frontline work because of political pressure and concerns about organizational risk. The result is that many grassroots organizations are being asked to respond to increasingly complex community needs while operating with fewer resources and less institutional protection.

Those conversations reinforced for me why intermediary organizations and fiscal sponsors are becoming more important globally.

Intermediaries can provide critical infrastructure, operational support, legal protection, and administrative capacity that help frontline organizations continue serving communities. In some cases, intermediaries are helping projects strengthen legal representation, reduce administrative burdens, and navigate increasingly complicated operating environments. They can also help philanthropy move resources more quickly and responsibly to organizations closest to the challenges communities are facing.

That’s part of why intermediary work feels less transactional and more relational. It’s not simply about distributing funding. It’s about making it possible for organizations, leaders, and communities to continue doing necessary work during increasingly complex times.

In addition to my time with fellow intermediaries, I also was able to see some of the amazing sights in Salzburg. If you're a "Sound of Music" nerd like me, you get it!

Bringing the Lessons Back to Missouri

I kept thinking about how much of this connects directly to what we’re building at Build Missouri Health.

One example is 314 Oasis, a fiscally sponsored project that launched immediately after the May 2025 tornado in St. Louis. Initially, 314 Oasis focused on emergency response — providing food, water, mental health services, and a place of respite for impacted residents. One year later, the organization has expanded into additional locations across North St. Louis, offering mobile outreach, meal services, deeper support through housing and rental assistance partnerships, pastoral care, and advocacy for tornado survivors and accountability in the cleanup and restoration of homes in North City.

Recently, 314 Oasis received additional funding through the St. Louis Regional Racial Healing and Justice Fund, allowing the organization to continue building on the relationships, trust, and infrastructure it is creating. For me, that's a tangible example of the ecosystem I heard described in Salzburg: community leaders, funders, and intermediary organizations each playing a role in helping innovative, community-led solutions take root and grow.

It also reflects something important about intermediary work: communities already have the ideas, relationships, and leadership needed to respond to challenges. What’s frequently missing is access to infrastructure, funding pathways, operational support, and collaborative networks that help those ideas grow and sustain over time.

Another conversation that stayed with me focused on collaborative funds and community giving models, approaches that can help move resources into communities, particularly rural areas that are often overlooked by institutional philanthropy. I left thinking about the opportunity Missouri has to continue building stronger systems for shared learning, partnership, and community-led investment.

We already see pieces of this happening across our state. For instance, the Community Foundation of the Ozarks hosts collaborative funds across southern Missouri and helps connect philanthropy more directly to local priorities and leadership. There are many opportunities to continue expanding community-led funding approaches that allow more people, not just institutions or major donors, to participate in creating healthier and more equitable communities.

Looking Ahead

None of these conversations ignored the realities communities and organizations are navigating right now. I’m well aware of the challenges, and they are real and complex. But I left Salzburg feeling hopeful.
Hopeful because these conversations are happening across communities and countries. Hopeful because people are continuing to imagine new ways to support grassroots leadership and community innovation. And hopeful because Build Missouri Health is part of a much larger network of organizations working to strengthen the systems, relationships, and infrastructure communities need to thrive.

At Build Missouri Health, we say that we want to foster and amplify community-led innovations through partnerships. This experience reinforced for me that intermediary work is ultimately about exactly that: helping communities and organizations move farther together than they could alone.

That kind of work requires all of us — funders, partners, advocates, community leaders, and supporters — to continue investing in the relationships, infrastructure, and shared learning that allow communities to respond, adapt, and thrive.

I’m grateful to everyone across Missouri who is helping build those systems alongside us.