The second chapter of the Council’s full 2015 Grantmakers Salary and Benefits Report provides extensive data on staff and salaries. In it, we offer tables on everything from the size of responding foundations to the diversity and salaries of their full-time staff and the tenure and turnover of…

Giving USA 2016 was released this week and found that overall U.S. charitable giving from all sources—including individuals, bequests, foundations and corporations—reached an estimated $373.25 billion in 2015. This was an all-time high for the second consecutive year. This increase held for both…

Editors Note. Since the publishing of this blog post, the Central Florida Foundation is no longer managing the distribution of donations to the OneOrlando Fund. The Foundation will now be administering the Better Together Fund. Read the full statement from the Foundation at www.cffound.org.…

Last week, I spent a day at the Colombian Embassy with 35 foundations from Colombia. The group was comprised of corporate and family foundations, members of the Association for Family and Corporate Foundation in Colombia (AFE), who co-hosted the event with the Council on Foundations. The goal of…

Toure’ Burgess, Lauren Hamilton, Lauren Wells, Mara Goldman, Sarah Stellwag, and McQuillin Murphy   The Council of Foundations’ summer interns are here! From now through August, our interns — all currently enrolled college students from across the country — will be working in the Council’s…

In our continuing blog post series about the 2015 Grantmakers Salary and Benefits Report (GSB), this week we are tackling the key findings section of the report. Get the Report Members, remember you can download the GSB for free. The report can also be purchased from our store at cof.org/2015salary…

It is my goal to bring to you monthly updates on Council activities relevant to community foundations. Further, I am reaching out to you today to introduce myself as the new Director of Community Philanthropy at the Council on Foundation.  As a former community foundation CEO in Indiana, I…

This post originally appeared on the Alliance Magazine blog.  At the World Humanitarian Summit (WHS) in Istanbul, more than 6000 attendees discussed how the global community delivers aid for the world’s most vulnerable people, especially given commitments to leave no one behind within the…

I’m pleased to share with you that the 2015 Full Grantmakers Salary and Benefits (GSB) Report is now available for immediate download. What is the GSB Report? Published since 1980, the GSB Report is an essential foundation operations tool. The research includes responses from 951 foundations…

Although the non-profit sector in America is well developed, I’ve often heard foundation and non-profit executives discuss the challenge of attracting and keeping high-performing staff and volunteers. So imagine how that problem is magnified in the developing world, where NGOs make a critical…

When we face a new challenge, one of our first instincts is to reach out to someone for advice. By collaborating, sharing resources, and discussing common challenges, you and your peers multiply your impact and advance the common good. The Philanthropy Exchange is an online platform devoted to…

This is the Council on Foundations team reporting from the 33rd Annual Representing and Managing Tax-Exempt Organizations Conference. This conference is the best-attended EO conference in the United States, and we are thrilled to see so many of our members and colleagues here. The first day of…

I have attended a lot of conferences over the years and have always felt driven to go to as many sessions as possible, to gather information and knowledge to bring back to my colleagues at the Maine Community Foundation. This time around was no different: I set out to get the latest on National…

At the Council’s 2016 Annual Conference, two influential foundation presidents sat down with the Council’s President and CEO Vikki Spruill to share their insights into the conference’s theme of purpose. Spruill opened what became a lively discussion with The Clinton Foundation President Donna…

A year and a half before the historic US Supreme Court ruling ended discrimination in civil marriage rights for same-sex couples, foundations and nonprofit leaders of the LGBTQ movement came together to address a concern: While many activists anticipated the legal victory, many also worried that…

  Last week I joined other members of the Veterans Philanthropy Exchange in Washington DC for our first meeting since the PwC Charitable Foundation, Inc. joined the Philanthropy Joining Forces Impact Pledge. All members have agreed to support veterans and their families as they rejoin our…