Getting to Scale & Getting Local
The Community Foundation Strategy
Julia Chang and Brandi Stewart
Two dancers sitting on a bench in a dance studio, stretching. Photo Credit: iStock.com/wundervisuals, Courtesy of The New York Community Trust.
Expanding and deepening philanthropic impact requires partnership, and finding the right collaborators is key. For private, corporate, and family foundations, there is a powerful and agile player within our philanthropic sector that is often underutilized for partnerships: the community foundation.
Who do you turn to when you need a national network to spread and distribute a big idea? Where do you go to for help when the morning news reveals that your philanthropic strategy needs to move into a new geographic region where you have no footprint? How do you distribute the increased funds that come with an increased payout rate with a staff that hasn’t yet grown to meet the bigger workload? Community foundations are strategic partners to corporate, family, and private foundations in each of these scenarios and more. This is because the structure of community foundations brings several unique benefits: sustained capacity, a long-term and systemic perspective, flexible infrastructure, expansive community reach and knowledge, and experience collaborating with other donors to uplift entire communities.
Just ask the Barr or Knight foundations. The Barr Foundation is working with local community foundations throughout urban and rural Massachusetts to build donor networks that can support and sustain arts ecosystems. The Knight Foundation is partnering with many community foundations nationwide to support local journalism in news deserts.
These two examples are only the tip of the iceberg. We think community foundations, of which there are more than 700 across the country, can be tapped more for initiatives to support the arts at both the hyperlocal and national scale, as well as for immediate efforts and more patient, long-term investments. The case study below offers some of the lessons learned from an effective collaboration between our organizations — The New York Community Trust and Doris Duke Foundation.
What is a Community Foundation?
Community foundations come in different shapes and sizes. But what unites them is that they are public charities that derive the bulk of their philanthropic dollars from a multitude of generous community members, past and present. They generally have a defined geographic or population focus, and their grantmaking is shaped by the specific wishes of their donors, which can be broad (for the betterment of the community) or narrow (to help needy injured ballet dancers — yes, The New York Community Trust has a fund for that!).
Community foundations often serve an important convening role and can be found helming disaster relief efforts. They are trusted brokers with government and private philanthropy and can mobilize broad cross-sectoral support. Forming collaborative partnerships and playing advisory roles, both for individual donors and other foundations, is key to many community foundations’ efforts to engage more community stakeholders, grow donor support, and amplify impact.
Case Example: The Doris Duke Foundation Performing Artist Recovery Fund
In 2021, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Doris Duke Foundation (DDF) knew that more had to be done to help performing artists, who were still suffering from the ongoing impact of the shutdown. A lifeline was needed as many relief funds were winding down. DDF partnered with The New York Community Trust (The Trust) to launch the Doris Duke Foundation Performing Artist Recovery Fund to provide artists with substantial economic security to support their ability to take care of life needs and sustain their craft. The Recovery Fund assisted artists who were financially struggling, with priority consideration to communities most impacted by COVID-19, including African, Latina/o/x, Asian, Arab, and Native American (ALAANA); Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC); and disabled, immigrant, older adult, LGBTQ, and women-identifying artists. It distributed unrestricted grants of $10,000 each to 300 dance, jazz, and theater artists nationwide to provide a total of $3 million in emergency financial relief.
The Trust was engaged by DDF to help administer this fund. While our collaboration was time-limited and for emergency relief, the lessons we learned are applicable to other private, corporate, or family foundations considering working with a community foundation partner.
Lesson 1: Many Hands Make Lighter Work
Amidst the several other relief initiatives and longstanding award programs the Duke arts team was running that summer, DDF knew that they needed extra people power to see this initiative through and a partner that could provide grants directly to individuals. Plus, the timeline required for this fund was quick — the RFP was stood up and the first grants were out the door within three months in order to get financial aid to artists as quickly as possible, while being thoughtful about the process.
DDF knew that The Trust had a reliable track record of designing and opening emergency funds quickly—it had launched the NYC Covid-19 Response & Impact Fund the same day that New York’s shelter-in-place order was announced in 2020. And DDF knew that The Trust had the administrative, financial, technological, and advising (aka, human) infrastructure in place to distribute individual awards for this one-time initiative.
The Trust drafted the request for proposals in partnership with DDF staff, accepted proposals, provided additional technical assistance to artists navigating the application process, convened and facilitated decision-making review committees of artist-practitioners and field experts, and made the grants and handled all grant letters and paperwork, including the distribution of tax forms. The Trust also analyzed and reported on aggregate trends, providing critical insight to DDF about how artists were doing, which ultimately influenced the design of future DDF programs. The Trust’s innate ability to work with many partners was also leveraged. Once the fund was launched, The Trust worked with DDF’s existing intermediary regranting partners (such as regional arts councils and discipline-specific service agencies) to help artists supported through DDF-funded regranting programs submit one-page applications as needed.
Like the Trust, most community foundations are ready partners that have the additional administrative, technological, financial due diligence, and evaluation capacity without having to build systems from scratch or scale up for singular projects.
Lesson 2: Context Is Key
Community foundations’ funds are derived from an array of sources, and their approach is often cross-sector and interdisciplinary. This makes community foundations great partners for initiatives that are targeting a particular local area or community, that might involve a new type of grantmaking, or that involve crisis response and recovery.
Since community foundations are structured for the long term, with deep relationships in their communities, they are apt partners for efforts that aim to lift up an entire ecosystem. This characteristic can make these local anchors effective partners on a broader geographic level. In the case of the Doris Duke Foundation Performing Artist Recovery Fund, the program’s reach was national. DDF turned to The Trust knowing that its expertise in New York City, the country's leading performing arts hub and one of the cities hit hardest by the pandemic, was a strength. The Foundation knew that The Trust was close to the pulse of what was happening, keenly understood the pain of artists, and knew that recovery across the country depended on the economic, social, and emotional wellbeing of the arts and arts workers.
Not all community foundations may be able to scale up their reach to a national level, or interested in doing so. But a robust national network of more than 700 community foundations in the U.S. exists that private foundations can draw on for initiatives that may have a national scale but benefit from local expertise.
Lesson 3: Shared Values Help Shared Branding
For the Doris Duke Performing Artist Recovery Fund, it was critical that the Foundation had a partner whose values aligned, particularly for a fund that demanded care and commitment to wellbeing during a stressful and emotional time for artists. DDF and The Trust entered the partnership with trust built through past collaborations, knowing that we shared the ultimate value of supporting not just artists’ work, but artists’ whole wellbeing — during the process, through the grant funds, and in our learning after the grants.
A key opportunity — and, sometimes, challenge — in any partnership can be branding. One unexpected co-branding challenge for us was that although the Fund was national, some artists thought they could only apply if they lived in New York (not true!) because The Trust administered the program from New York. But by communicating consistently and openly, we addressed the confusion head on and were able to encourage invited artists from all parts of the country to apply. That communication was key. And that communication confirmed that a collaboration with shared leadership and branding was smoothed by having shared values.
Conclusion
As other foundations and corporations consider entering new grantmaking areas or launching collaborative efforts, consider the additional capacity, interdisciplinary perspective, and local knowledge that working with a community foundation might bring. Community foundations particularly shine when they can leverage the trust they’ve earned from funders and nonprofits—and the people who make it all possible—to build a wider system of support for a given area. We urge grantmakers to consider working with their local community foundation as a partner to help tackle new challenges and mobilize additional hearts and hands in the communities they care about.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Julia Chang is philanthropic initiatives officer at The New York Community Trust.
Brandi Stewart is senior program officer and interim program director for the arts at Doris Duke Foundation.
