Our History

Foundation for Civil Society (FCS) is an independent Tanzanian non-profit organization that provides grants and capacity building services to civil society organizations (CSOs) so as to enhance their effectiveness in enabling engagement of citizens in development processes. It was established by development stakeholders in Tanzania.

FCS was established and registered in September 2002 and started operations in January 2003. The journey for Foundation for Civil Society involved many development stakeholders including the government and development partners (DPs) who agreed that there was a lack of public resources to support civil society and hence explored the intent of setting up an alternative mechanism for providing grants and capacity building services to grassroots civil society organisations across Tanzania, both in the Mainland and in Zanzibar. It is governed by an independent Board.

FCS enables citizens to become a strong driving force for change in improving the democratic governance of Tanzania, in fighting poverty and in achieving a better quality life for all. It has indeed grown from an idea to a strong institution. In 15 years of our operations, we have mobilised over Tshs 200 billion from Development Partners and invested in enabling more than 5,000 CSOs countrywide to implement various projects that address many social development challenges in communities of all regions of Tanzania, mainland and in the Isles (Zanzibar). We have reached over 30 million Tanzanians for tvhe past one and a half decades making us the only grant issuing organisation with an extensive reach in the grassroots. The number of CSOs engaged and the total value of our resources invested to strengthen them make us one of the biggest non-profit grant making institutions in sub-Saharan Africa.