A New Conversation

Last August, CFLeads published a working paper¹ asserting that there are both market and moral imperatives for community foundations to develop their community leadership potential. Reduced to essentials, the paper argues that community leadership is the highest and best use of these versatile institutions and, from a survival standpoint, what distinguishes community foundations in an increasingly crowded philanthropic marketplace.

This report describes efforts initiated at the field level to make community leadership more intelligible and more accessible to more community foundations.

Those on the front lines of community leadership are changing the conversation and sweating the details. More emphasis is being placed on outcomes, less on exit strategies. Concerns about diversity are moving beyond numbers into more nuanced inquiries about inclusion. Hard decisions are being made as community foundations realign their organizations for greater impact. Staff composition and skill sets are under scrutiny. Boards are changing not only to reflect the complex makeup of their communities but to tap new spheres of influence.

For these community foundations, the gap is closing between rhetoric and reality on community leadership. For the vast majority, however, community leadership is generating equal measures of interest and apprehension.

1 Ballard, Cindy Sesler. 2007. Community Foundations and Community Leadership. Community Leadership Series, no. 1, CFLeads and Council on Foundations.