How Community Foundations Can Deploy All Resources to Build Community Wealth

Over the past decade, the idea that community foundations play an important role in the life of the communities where they are based has been gaining more and more momentum. As the community foundation field matures and faces growing pressure on its business model, many communities at the same time are struggling with economic distress. To meet these converging challenges, some community foundations are beginning to deepen and shift how they work—adopting mission that seeks to fully deploy all resources to build community wealth. They are calling on all assets at their disposal—financial, human, intellectual, and political—in service of their communities’ economic well-being. Moving into territory relatively uncharted for community foundations, they are taking up impact investing and economic development—some in advanced ways, others with small steps. This report offers an overview of how 30 representative community foundations, large and small, urban and rural, are working toward adopting this new anchor mission.