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

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 2025 we are financing our work with two institutional grants – from the Polish EFC Foundation and the US-based Open Society Foundations – and three project grants – from the European Climate Foundation, the Robert Bosch Stiftung and the Clean Air Fund. Our budget for 2025 totals approximately EUR 450.000. The NCF has been certified as equivalent to a US public charity.

In 2024 our work was financed exclusively with project grants, awarded by the Robert Bosch Stiftung, the National Endowment for Democracy, the European Climate Foundation and the European Commission. 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 on 2020 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.

Want to learn more about us?

Download our 2025 deck: NCF at at a glance

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 :)

Name

First Name

Last Name

Email

Message

The New Community Foundation, based in Warsaw (e-mail: biuro@fnw.org.pl), processes your personal data in order to keep in touch with you. You have the right to access, rectification, erasure or restriction of processing, to object, to portability and to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority. For more information, please see the website's Privacy Policy.

I agree that educational and informational material in the form of a newsletter and information about activities and events organised by the New Community Foundation based in Warsaw may be delivered to me through the e-mail address stated above.

By submitting the form, you consent to the processing of your personal data by the New Community Foundation based in Warsaw (e-mail: biuro@fnw.org.pl) for the purpose of sending educational and informational materials in the form of a newsletter and information about the activities and events of the Foundation. You have the right of access, rectification, erasure, restriction of processing, the right to data portability, to lodge an objection, as well as the right to complain to a supervisory authority. The full data processing notice is available here.