The Many Sizes, Shapes and Strategies of Community Foundations

Community Foundations have played a major role in facilitating pandemic-era relief efforts. Halfpoint/shutterstock

There are more than 800 community foundations in the United States, and they are as varied as can be. Some have assets in the low six figures, and others manage billions. Many have a mission to improve the quality of life in a specific geographic community, but there are also community foundations organized to support communities defined by something other than geography — for instance, women’s funds and LGBTQI+ community foundations.

They also operate in multiple ways. Most serve as homes to local donor-advised funds, convenient (and often controversial) mechanisms for family giving, minus all the paperwork and some of the legal requirements of an incorporated foundation. Community foundations also frequently provide opportunities for local donors to pool funds or otherwise align their giving, and sometimes have their own grantmaking programs run by foundation staff. Finally, they often run their own local programming, producing research reports, organizing events, or issuing scholarships, for example.

While community foundations have a reputation for fairly middle-of-the-road charitable work, having to keep their large donor pools happy, we have seen them branching out to take bolder stances in recent years on issues like racial justice and climate change. Community foundations also played an important role in channeling relief funds during the pandemic.

To offer a glimpse of the many ways there are to be a community foundation, here, we highlight a handful from across the spectrum.

Silicon Valley Community Foundation

The Silicon Valley Community Foundation is the wealthiest community foundation in the country, with $12.2 billion in assets as of its 2020 annual report. SVCF awarded more than 17,000 grants totaling $1.95 billion that year, much of that giving happening through donor-advised funds. Beyond hosting DAFs and making grants, SVCF has also been a leader in local philanthropy, encouraging wealthy donors to give locally in a region of extreme wealth inequality, where some community members struggle to make ends meet and others hold some of the world’s biggest fortunes. 

San Francisco Foundation

The San Francisco Foundation, another of the nation’s largest community foundations, with assets totaling $1.5 billion, manages hundreds of millions in DAF assets, as well as a large endowment that enables SFF to make substantial programmatic grants of its own. Established in 1948, the San Francisco Foundation has deep roots in Bay Area philanthropy and is a leader in the region, with decades of experience building relationships and connecting partners across sectors. San Francisco Foundation represented the philanthropic community in the Committee to House the Bay Area (CASA), a cross-sector initiative convened by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission and the Association of Bay Area governments, and is a key partner in Partnership for the Bay’s Future, a public-private initiative bringing together some of the region’s top funders to support community-informed solutions for affordable housing. The foundation is explicitly guided by an equity-focused agenda. 

Ketchikan Community Foundation

The Ketchikan Community Foundation, an affiliate of the larger Alaska Community Foundation, makes targeted local grants in the city of Ketchikan, population approximately 8,000, in southern Alaska. Recent grants focus on serving unhoused people, people with disabilities, youth, and seniors. Their 2021 grant cycle made grants ranging from $700 to $9,620 to five local nonprofits, supporting a Boy Scout Camp, a community garden, access to outdoor recreation for people with disabilities, the community radio station, and domestic violence prevention program. 

Hartford Foundation for Public Giving

The Hartford Foundation for Public Giving serves 29 towns with a combined population of about 750,000 in Connecticut. The foundation is notable for its commitment to participatory grantmaking. For each of the 29 towns, the foundation hosts a dedicated fund overseen by a community-led advisory committee that designs its own grantmaking process. The foundation was launched with a single bequest of $1,000 in 1925 and now has an endowment of more than $1 billion. In addition to the 29 community funds, the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving also hosts DAFs, makes emergency assistance grants for small businesses, offers capacity-building support to local nonprofits, and more. 

Diverse City Fund

The Diverse City Fund is a community-based funder that describes itself as “supporting the visions of people of the global majority in D.C.” They support BIPOC-led, community-based groups through community-led grantmaking, capacity-building support, and networking and educational opportunities. A rotating group of local activists and residents participate in grantmaking decisions. The fund holds two grant cycles per year and makes grants of up to $5,000 to individual organizations and up to $15,000 to coalition projects. 

The International Community Foundation

The geographical focus of the International Community Foundation is Mexico, Central and South America, and the Caribbean. The foundation hosts DAFs and offers estate planning, research, and advisory services, from its home base in San Diego. This is helpful to donors because global giving can be complex and time-consuming, with different legal barriers and tax ramifications than giving from the U.S. to U.S.-based organizations. The International Community Foundation serves as a philanthropic intermediary to make this process easier, giving U.S.-based donors a path to support grassroots organizations in Mexico, Central and South America, and the Caribbean. In 2021, ICF awarded $10.8 million in grants. The foundation has given more than $88 million since its founding in 1990. 

Stonewall Community Foundation

The Stonewall Community Foundation supports LGBTQ communities in New York City. The foundation was established in 1990 amid the AIDS crisis and the growing number of nonprofits focused on LGBTQ issues and communities. Its founders wanted to create a “for us and by us” foundation through which LGBTQ donors could resource LGBTQ organizations. The Stonewall Community Foundation has given more than $20 million since its founding, and makes grants ranging from $25 to $5,000 to more than 100 New York City nonprofits annually. 

Latino Community Foundation

The Latino Community Foundation has a mission “to unleash the power of Latinos in California.” They do this through building a movement of Latino philanthropists, investing in Latino-led organizations, and building civic and political power. LCF’s Latino Power Fund is a five-year, $50 million fund to support Latino-led grassroots organizations in California. While many community foundations host DAFs as a major part of what they do, the Latino Community Foundation decidedly does not. “We don’t want to create more spaces for people to sit on assets versus liberating that capital to support communities of color,” said CEO Jacqueline Martinez Garcel in an interview for our State of American Philanthropy report on giving in Northern California. 

Jewish Federations

Jewish federations — local community foundations that are part of a national network — play a big role in Jewish communities and philanthropy. Local federations, which are secular nonprofits, receive donations large and small from members of the community, and then use those funds to meet needs across the community. Guided by the Jewish values of tzedakah (charity and social justice) and tikkun olam (repairing the world), the federations’ model of community giving through an annual fundraiser to meet community needs all year long inspired the early 20th century American charitable movement of Community Chests, which evolved into what we know today as the United Way. There are more than 146 federations and more than 300 smaller communities within the national network Jewish Federations of North America, which collectively raise and distribute more than $3 billion annually.