For the second straight year, roughly two-thirds of all reporting community foundations ended their fiscal year with an overall operating surplus, which provides some level of flexibility to invest in special initiatives and community leadership efforts. Although administrative fees make up the vast majority of earned revenues across the field, it is often the case that these alone are not enough to cover operating expenses; community foundations rely on other forms of revenue from fee for service offerings, internal distributions from operating funds, and direct fundraising from individuals and other funders to support operations. Community foundations with an operating deficit, once all other revenue sources are accounted for, will commonly take a distribution from their unrestricted fund to cover the shortfall, impacting their ability to make or deepen investments in other areas.

The categories in the chart below are calculated as revenues divided by expenses: Significant surplus >125%; Modest surplus = 105%-124%; Breakeven = 95%-104%; Modest subsidy = 75%-94%; Significant subsidy <75% (n=179)