Introducing the Future Fund
Strengthening Civic Infrastructure
and Community Resilience in Hungary
The Roots and Wings Foundation has launched the Future Fund: a long-term, flexible funding mechanism designed to strengthen community-rooted civic actors in Hungary.
Hungary is entering a period of heightened political and social uncertainty as parliamentary elections approach in April 2026. Yet the more fundamental question is not electoral change itself, but whether the social fabric beneath formal institutions remains capable of sustaining democratic life, regardless of political outcomes.
Over the past decade, the space for independent civil society has steadily narrowed. During successive crises, the pandemic, the cost-of-living crisis, and prolonged institutional erosion, meaningful social responses most often emerged not from formal systems, but from local civic life: from people, relationships, trust, and locally rooted responsibility.
The Future Fund responds to this structural reality. It introduces longer time horizons, core support, and a new quality of funding into Hungarian civil infrastructure financing.
Why the Future Fund?
From a funding perspective, a structural imbalance has become clear. Mainstream support has largely taken the form of project, emergency, or advocacy funding, while core support combined with context-sensitive professional accompaniment remains chronically underfunded.
Project-type funding rarely reaches the deeper social layers where democratic resilience actually forms.
The conclusion is clear: a different form of long-term, high-quality support is needed — one capable of reaching further and deeper than current funding logics allow.
It addresses this gap in a focused and deliberate way.
Rather than attempting to address the entire civil society landscape, it concentrates on a specific set of catalytic civic infrastructure actors whose work shapes these deep layers through people, relationships, and organisational continuity.
What the Future Fund Supports
The Future Fund provides multi-year, core financial support to catalytic civic infrastructure actors operating at the local and community level.
Rather than funding projects, the Fund focuses deliberately on the deep social layers where democratic capacity is shaped. It invests in:
- people and leadership
- relationships and trust
- organisational presence and continuity
- local responsibility and agency
The organisations supported by the Fund do not “deliver” democracy. They enable, connect, and stabilise the conditions under which democratic practices can emerge and endure.
Civic infrastructure building is slow, relational, and cumulative. A three-year support cycle is the minimum meaningful timeframe to generate lasting effects in the local social fabric.
What the Future Fund Is Not
The Future Fund does not support:
- political parties or electoral campaigns
- election mobilisation
- short-term or visibility-driven projects
- organisations operating exclusively within project logic
The Fund does not seek to replace the state or to act as a political actor. Its focus is civic resilience and social capacity, not political outcomes.
Why Roots and Wings Foundation?
The Future Fund builds on more than a decade of field-based work across Hungary.
To date, the Foundation has supported 83 civic organisations, combining financial support with long-term professional accompaniment. This work has generated deep relational knowledge of local civic ecosystems: who holds trust, how cooperation functions, where risks accumulate, and which actors are capable of long-term responsibility.
Grantmaking decisions are grounded in long-term presence and lived experience, not solely in written applications.
Fund Structure (In Development)
The Future Fund is designed as a multi-year core support mechanism.
- Support cycles: 3 years
- Indicative support: €40,000–60,000 per organisation over 3 years
- Initial target: minimum €300,000 (supporting 5–6 organisations)
- Medium-term goal: €1 million over 5 years
Indicative cost structure:
- ~60% direct support to organisations
- ~15% fund management and tailored accompaniment
- ~5% reflection and shared learning
- ~20% institutional base (finance, compliance, infrastructure)
Join Us in Strengthening the Deep Layers of Democracy
The Future Fund is an investment in the connective tissue of Hungarian society, in the relationships, and capacities that determine whether democratic practices can take root and endure.
By contributing to the Future Fund, you are not supporting short-term projects. You are strengthening the social infrastructure upon which long-term democratic resilience depends.
We invite individuals and institutional partners to join us in building this next phase of civic infrastructure in Hungary.
We are pleased to share that 50% of the 2025 target has already been contributed, giving us a strong start—but we need your support to ensure this effort reaches its full potential.
Let’s build this future together. Will you join us?
Euro bank account:
Account holder: Gyökerek és Szárnyak Alapítvány
Holder’s address: Budapest 1092, Ráday utca 32
IBAN: HU59 1620 0106 1161 7040 0000 0000
SWIFT / BIC: HBWEHUHB
US Dollar bank account:
Account holder: Gyökerek és Szárnyak Alapítvány
Holder’s address: Budapest 1092, Ráday utca 32
IBAN: HU21 1070 2404 7355 2321 5000 0005
SWIFT / BIC: CIBHHUHBXXX
For more details please contact us:
György Hámori
EMAIL: gyorgy.hamori@gy-sz.hu
