The Council Awards recognize exceptional leadership, innovation, and impact across the philanthropic sector. Originally established in the 1980s, the Council's flagship awards are the Distinguished Service Award and the Scrivner Award for Creative Grantmaking. These two awards anchor the program in celebrating outstanding contributions to the field.
In recent years, the program has expanded to recognize additional forms of leadership. In 2022, the Council introduced the Outstanding Corporate Philanthropy Leadership Award to recognize an individual at a corporate foundation or a corporate giving program that is advancing the greater good.
This year, the program expands further with two new honors. First, the Building Together Award recognizes philanthropic organizations, initiatives, and/or collaboratives that invest in and/or adopt approaches that bring people together. Second, the Excellence in Community Foundation Leadership Award honors vision and impact through distinctive leadership at community foundations.
Please join us in Seattle, WA for Building Together from May 4-7, 2026 to recognize our award winners.
The Council thanks the 2025 Award Selection Committee Members for their dedication and support in choosing the honorees.
Distinguished Service Award
Purpose: Honoring Lifetime Achievement and Prestige in the Sector
The Distinguished Service Award, philanthropy’s highest honor, celebrates a visionary leader who inspires and embodies the qualities that define excellence in philanthropy, including commitment, courage, entrepreneurship, and impact. Previous winners have been noted philanthropic leaders who have both mobilized and unified people and institutions to produce tangible results that improve people's lives and raise the capacity of others to advance the common good.
2025 Award Winner
Rip Rapson
President & CEO
The Kresge Foundation
Building Together Award
Purpose: Celebrates philanthropic organizations, initiatives, and collaboratives who foster dialogue, understanding, and collaboration across differences to create belonging, share purpose, and collective solutions.
The Building Together Award grew out of the Council on Foundations’ strategic focus on Building Common Ground. The award recognizes philanthropic organizations, initiatives, and/or collaboratives that invest in and/or adopt approaches that help us come together, not apart.
2025 Award Winner
Innovia Foundation
Excellence in Community Foundation Leadership Award
Purpose: Honoring vision and impact through distinctive leadership at community foundations.
This award recognizes an exceptional senior leader at a community foundation who demonstrates outstanding courage, integrity, trust, and impact in advancing their institution’s mission and the broader philanthropic field.
2025 Award Winner
Ralph Serpe
President & CEO
Adams County Community Foundation
Outstanding Corporate Philanthropy Leadership Award
Purpose: Celebrating individuals who embody integrity, leadership, and accomplishment that define excellence in the field of corporate philanthropy.
In 2022, this award was launched to honor an individual at a corporate foundation or a corporate giving program that is advancing the greater good.
2025 Award Winner
Charu Adesnik
Executive Director CEO
Cisco Foundation
Director, Social Innovation & Impact Investments
Scrivner Award for Creative Grantmaking
Purpose: Celebrating grantmakers who demonstrate outstanding creativity, vision, principle, making a critical difference in a creative way.
This award recognizes a single or group of grantmaking organizations for innovative and impactful contributions to the sector.
2025 Award Winner
