Council on Foundations

The Council on Foundations is a membership organization of more than 2,000 grantmaking foundations and giving programs worldwide. It is devoted to offering the opportunities, leadership, and tools to help its members to enhance their ability to advance the common good.

• Donor Priorities Study: This work used conjoint analysis to better understand the decision priorities of donors when they considered establishing a fund with a community foundation or a commercial charitable gift fund;
• Cost-Revenue Tools: These tools, made available free-of-charge to community foundations, apply activity-based costing methodology to enable a community foundation to understand the contribution made or subsidy required by each of their "product lines";
• Interactive Strategy Model Tool: The ISM is a strategic forecasting tool that enables a community foundation to model the impact of different operating and strategic scenarios on long-term sustainability;
• Community Foundation Information Needs Analysis: A study of the strategic information needs of community foundations, the results of which led to FSG pursuing the launch of the Community Foundation Insights (CFI) in 2006; and
• National Philanthropic Advisors Study: This effort developed a profile of the universe of philanthropic advisors and considered the fit of the advisor role with the capabilities of community foundations.