Community Philanthropy

The Future of Community Philanthropy project has already developed a range of products to help community foundations and others begin to think more systematically about the future. This section of the website serves as a central repository for those materials.

Many of the products continue to evolve, and we would like to ask for your assistance in helping us to revise and improve the materials we have developed for the field. We ask that if you use any of our work, you please let us know how it goes. We want to hear your stories—how your board responded to the report or executive summary, how you used the tools we provide, how you have tried to operationalize ideas that emerged from the project—so that we can continue to improve the materials and so that every community foundation can benefit from the experiences and learning of their peers. We look forward to hearing your experiences, and can be reached at info@communityphilanthropy.org.


	On the Brink of New Promise: The Future of U.S. Community Foundations. This report captures the findings of the first phase of the future of community philanthropy project. It examines the changing environment for community philanthropy and its implications for community foundations. It details why we believe that U.S. community foundations have entered a pivotal new era that may hold surprises as significant as was the introduction of commercial charitable gift funds in the early 1990s.
	On the Brink of New Promise Executive Summary. While we encourage anyone interested in the future of community philanthropy to read On the Brink of New Promise in its entirety, we recognize that board members and others may not have sufficient time to read the full report. The executive summary captures many of the key ideas from the larger piece, and serves as a quick primer on the future of U.S. community foundations and community philanthropy.
	Toolkit. This companion toolkit is designed to make it easier for community foundations to understand and apply the lessons of On the Brink of New Promise to the specific circumstances of their communities and organizations. It contains tools that can be used for everything from a 45-minute presentation to your board to the front end of an extended, in-depth strategic planning process.
	Ongoing Project Updates. The future is, of course, a moving target. As the world changes around community foundations, it is not enough simply to create a static report that quickly becomes outdated. Over the course of 2006, we will continue to develop short updates and informational briefings to help community philanthropy organizations further explore and understand various aspects of their operating environment. Resources and Tools. Our work builds on a growing body of literature about and tools for community foundations and the larger field of community philanthropy. While by no means comprehensive, this page includes a short annotated bibliography (with web links when possible) of a few of the resources that we found especially valuable in deepening our understanding of the field. It also provides links to many organizations that have created useful tools for community foundations.