Community Foundations
Community foundations are grantmaking public charities that are dedicated to improving the lives of people in a defined local geographic area. They bring together the financial resources of individuals, families, and businesses to support effective nonprofits in their communities. Community foundations vary widely in asset size, ranging from less than $100,000 to more than $1.7 billion.
Community foundations play a key role in identifying and solving community problems. In 2017, they gave an estimated $5.48 billion to a variety of nonprofit activities in fields that included the arts and education, health and human services, the environment, and disaster relief. The Community Foundations National Standards Board confirms operational excellence in six key areas—mission, structure, and governance; resource development; stewardship and accountability; grantmaking and community leadership; donor relations; and communications. Foundations that comply with these standards can display the official National Standards Seal. Currently, over 500 community foundations have earned the seal.
More than 900 community foundations operate in urban and rural areas in every state in the United States; currently, approximately 350 are members of the Council on Foundations. The community foundation model also has taken hold around the world. Community foundations have participated in the growth of international giving by U.S. foundations in recent years, with international giving by community foundations more than tripling, from $103 million in 2011 to $315 million in 2015, and community foundations' share of overall international giving by U.S. foundations more than doubling, from 1.4 percent in 2011 to 3.4 percent in 2015.
You can use our Community Foundation Locator to view a list of community foundations in the United States.
Below is everything on our site for community foundations. We highly recommend that you use the navigation or our search feature to find what you're looking for on our site. Please also visit cof.org/community-foundations for curated community foundation content.
The Council on Foundations Announces 2021 Career Pathways Cohorts
WASHINGTON, DC - The Council on Foundations today announced the two cohorts selected to participate in the 2021 Career Pathways program, a leadership development program designed to diversify the talent pipeline for executive roles in the philanthropic sector. The 47 new participants are members of…
Leading Together 2021 - Plenary Sessions
Plenary sessions
A Better Path Forward: Unlikely Partnerships for the Greater Good
Tuesday, June 15 | 11:15 a.m.-12:30 p.m. | Sponsored by Conrad N. Hilton Foundation
This uplifting conference…
Webinar Recording: Policy Update: Connecting the Dots Between the Biden Administration's Policy Proposals and Philanthropy
Hear an overview of the recently passed $1.9 trillion relief legislation known as the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) and the key pillars of the new infrastructure proposals, the American Jobs Plan, announced by President Biden on March 31. The jobs plan targets 40 percent of the benefits of…
Systemic Racism: Disasters Expose It – How Do We Address It?
Racism is ever-present in our society, but for those who are not Black, Indigenous or People of Color (BIPOC), it is sometimes easy to brush it aside. However, disasters lay bare the inequities that exist in societies around the world.
COVID-19 has been a clear example of how disasters exacerbate…
Leading Together 2021 - Unable to Attend
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Leading Together 2021 - Concurrent Sessions
Concurrent sessions
Leading Together 2021 centered trust and equity as critical cornerstones of strong partnerships and effective, high integrity philanthropy. The conference featured programming you won't find anywhere else. Our concurrent sessions focused on one of three themes.…
Leading Together 2021 - Raising the Bar Sessions
Raising the bar
These sessions focused on sharing the best practices, resources, and tools for philanthropic leaders to be agents of change in their organizations and communities.
Participation, Power and Philanthropy: Putting Nonprofits and Communities…
Leading Together 2021 - Advancing Equity Sessions
Advancing equity
These sessions featured diverse voices on issues such as inclusive economic prosperity, racial injustice, income equality, and values aligned philanthropy.
Numbers Don’t Lie: A Data-Guided Approach to Addressing Racial Inequities in…
Leading Together 2021 - Seeking Common Ground Sessions
Seeking common ground
These sessions sparked conversations that challenge philanthropy to bridge divides, explore unlikely partnerships and engage with different points of view. This conference theme was generously supported by the Walton Family Foundation…
PhilEx Live: Accepting Cryptocurrency Gifts
Developed out of a trending conversation on the Philanthropy Exchange (PhilEx), the Council invites you to join a member-only peer-led discussion around accepting cryptocurrency gifts.
Join peers from member organizations across the country to discuss the steps they are taking to begin accepting…
A Census Like No Other: A Multi-Sector, Community-Focused Partnership
Despite having millions of households considered “hard-to-count,” and being challenged by a global pandemic, California successfully implemented Census outreach in 2020, generating a 69.6% response rate, higher than the national average response rate. In this session, foundation,…
Numbers Don’t Lie: A Data-Guided Approach to Addressing Racial Inequities in Philanthropic Practice
Philanthropic giving to communities of color remains low. In 2016, The Pittsburgh Foundation began a journey toward more just grantmaking, leading with data to achieve greater equity. This session will provide an overview of an approach that led to sustained increases in monetary and non-monetary…
Participation, Power and Philanthropy: Putting Nonprofits and Communities in the Driver's Seat
As grantmakers, our desire to have a transformational impact on the communities we serve catalyzes and ignites our work. To create the greatest impact, we must work in tandem with nonprofits and those with lived experience to sufficiently understand the issues and to co-create a path forward. What…
Digital Dependencies, Discrimination, and Democracy: What are Philanthropy’s Roles?
Every aspect of public life depends on digital systems. Awareness and adaptation to the potential harms of digital systems is critical to pursuing positive change. Black women are leading the way in scholarship and advocacy regarding the intersections of digital systems, racism and discrimination…
Building the Next-Generation Community Investment Ecosystem: How Foundations Can Advance Racial Equity
Will recovery from COVID-19 and racial reckoning finally bring our society closer to racial justice? This session will explore how foundations can shift the ways capital enters communities of color by helping to build investment ecosystems that finance community priorities. Participants will…
Best Practices for Equitable Philanthropy: Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic
Center for Disaster Philanthropy and Candid have conducted two research reports on COVID-19 philanthropy, tracking over $20.2 billion in disaster giving for the pandemic within 2020. Our data from the reports have shown an increase in BIPOC giving over the course of the year, as well as increased…
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