What business does a community foundation have hawking for-profit deals to its donors and other community members?  How does it improve the quality of life in their community?  How does it promote the spirit and practice of philanthropy and service?   Well it turns out, some…

I recently attended the 2012 Emerging Practitioners in Philanthropy (EPIP) and the Council on Foundation conferences in Los Angeles. I must say that attending both of them were turning points in my career. I’m in the process of changing from a career in fashion to a career in philanthropy. Although…

As the CEO of the Community Foundation of Louisville, I travel to Washington, D.C., each year and make the rounds as part of Foundations on the Hill, supported by the Council on Foundations and the Southeastern Council of Foundations. For most of us, this journey is a sprint, since we visit dozens…

For today’s post, we’ve asked two leaders to weigh in on topics of interest to young, growing community foundations. Their organizations—Kern Community Foundation and The Community Foundation of Mendocino County—participated in Community Foundations Initiative II, a multiyear initiative by The…

Recently, I had the pleasure of attending the Center for Digital Information’s session on philanthropy and the digital public dialogue at theCouncil on Foundations Annual Conference in Los Angeles. Jeff Stanger, director of the center, arranged a session that brought together 21st century thought…

Yesterday, I wrote a bit about how funders, like all humans, are programmed by millions of years of evolution to hate failure. But our DNA hasn’t kept pace with the changing times. If our brains were adapted to the modern world instead of the prehistoric reality of the first apes with opposable…

Last year, influenced by the hype around Darwin’s 150th anniversary, I developed an interest in evolutionary theory. I read a few books about it, including the masterful Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, and since then I’ve been kind of obsessed. I usually find myself in odd moments trying to analyze human…

“The movement towards outcomes-driven philanthropy has done a lot to diminish creativity,” concluded one CEO at a recent GMA Foundations’ NPO Conversation on creativity. At this regular lunchtime forum, leaders of seven Boston-area nonprofits were asked to open up about their organization’s most…

On April 18, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan visited Dubuque, Iowa to launch the Together for Tomorrow campaign.  I was honored to share the stage with him and highlight the Community Foundation of Greater Dubuque’s recent work on a third grade reading initiative with our school…

I recently signed a check for our 2012 Council on Foundations dues. Since I’m the chair of the Council that is probably not surprising. But that’s not my day job. My paycheck comes from being the CEO of Berks County Community Foundation. I was the first employee hired by the foundation, and, like…

In 2009, Lumina Foundation set a goal: we wanted to help 60 percent of Americans obtain a high-quality postsecondary degree or be credential by 2025. We began reporting on progress toward the “big goal” in a series called A Stronger Nation through Higher Education. At the time, setting a national…

I never imagined that I would actually be the inaugural winner of the Betty Jane France Humanitarian Award until my name was announced during the awards ceremony in Las Vegas. My immediate reaction was to make the “I Love You” sign, because love is the reason I was there in the first place. My…

On the 20th anniversary of the Los Angeles Riots, the opening plenary session at the Council’s Annual Conference, “Realization, Rethinking, and Reinvention in the Wake of Crisis,” looked at how crisis has become a catalyst for change in Los Angeles, New Orleans, and Detroit. While these communities…

With input from IBM and nine other leading companies, the Council on Foundations just launched an ambitious initiative to revitalize and redefine the roles of corporate foundations and philanthropy. Increasing Impact, Enhancing Value: A Practitioner’s Guide to Corporate Philanthropy establishes a…

How can a foundation CEO set a tone and culture that strike the right balance between rational, disciplined, and quantitative grantmaking and passion-driven, responsive, and intuitive approaches?  A packed room of CEOs grappled with this question at the Council’s Annual Conference during the “…

Funders, nonprofit journalists and academics gathered this week at the Council on Foundations convention in Los Angeles to discuss challenges nonprofit news outlets face in getting charitable 501c3 status. It’s part of a project called the Nonprofit Media Working Group, a partnership between…