Embracing Better Ways of Operating
Sample Post-Grant Self-Evaluation
Sample Document
This sample post-grant evaluation can be customized to your foundation and provided to your grantees to submit at the conclusion of their grant.
Fundamentals
A family foundation's legal responsibilities for monitoring, assessing, or evaluating the grants it makes to organizations with 501(c)(3) tax exempt status are minimal. The IRS requires little in the way of detailed reporting on the outcome of specific grants—except for grants to organizations that…
Legal Compliance Guidance
The Stewardship Principles for Independent Foundations are a set of governance best practices that embody how independent foundations can reflect fundamental values such as honesty, integrity, fairness, and trust in their board governance, management, and grantmaking.
Sample Grant File Index
Sample Document
This sample grant file index allows you to see the types of information which your foundation may need to keep on each of your grantees.
Legal Compliance Guidance
The Stewardship Principles for Family Foundations are a set of governance best practices that embody how family foundations can reflect fundamental values (including honesty, integrity, fairness, and trust) in their board governance, management, and grantmaking.
Sample Expenditure Report
Sample Document
This customizable sample report allows you to track expenditures by grantees.
Fundamentals
Most people do not think of their family as having a “culture.” For many, it's a group of familiar people doing what they always do.
Yet it is exactly this—a characteristic way of thinking, feeling, judging, and acting—that defines a culture. Both in direct and subtle ways, children are molded by…
Sample Docket Write-up of Program Goals and Strategies
Sample Document
This sample docket write-up allows you to customize your program goal and strategies.
A Colleague's Perspective on Mission and Vision Statements
Fundamentals
This perspective offered by William Graustein of the William Caspar Graustein Memorial Fund in 2013 provides useful context on creating your own foundation's mission and vision statements.
When you get down to it, the reason a charitable foundation exists is to change the world or, at least…
Closing Documents Checklist
Sample Document
As you prepare to close out grants, this customizable checklist can help ensure that you've received the appropriate documents from grantees.
Sample Grant Closing Letter
Sample Document
You can send this customizable sample closing letter to grantees upon the conclusion of their grant.
Sample Grant Close-Out Form
Sample Document
This sample grant close-out form can help you wrap up outstanding grants.
Fundamentals
Family celebrations and holidays are prime opportunities to create philanthropic traditions (and develop philanthropic values). To honor a child’s birthday you might plant a tree. For Mother’s Day, help your children do a good deed for someone else’s mother whose children can’t be with her. Family…
External Resource
From the Family Foundation Advisor, this article reviews the sunset-vs.-perpetuity issue and considers the potential benefits of a sunset date, with the special considerations of small family foundations in mind.
Sample Expenditure Responsibility Grant Agreement
Sample Document
Editable grant agreement for grants requiring expenditure responsibility.
This sample document is being provided for informational purposes and is not to be shared without the permission of the Council on Foundations. Use of the sample document does not create an attorney-client relationship…
Fundamentals
This briefing will help your board consider three main questions: what are the advantages and limitations of CEOs on boards? If the CEO is on the board, should they have full voting rights? How do your colleagues approach this decision?