Doubts About Community-Foundation Group

To the Editor:

No matter what they say, if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and looks like a duck, it’s a duck. The same can be said of the newly formed Community Foundations of America (“New Organization to Help Community Foundations,” December 16).

The claim that C.F.A. will not compete with the Council on Foundations but rather complement the council’s activities is naïve at best and disingenuous at worst. It is hard to imagine a scenario in which C.F.A. will not dilute the influence and divert the resources of community foundations. Consider the following:

* Timing. It is disquieting that C.F.A. was launched following a comprehensive process involving the entire community-foundation field to review the Council on Foundations’ relationship with community foundations. If the new group’s leaders’ true intention was to work collaboratively with the council, it is revealing that they were unwilling to delay their effort until they could evaluate the success or failure of the recommendations that were created by their community-foundation colleagues.

* Funding. Few community foundations can afford to pay membership dues to two organizations purporting to do the same things. Similarly, the few national foundations that support the community-foundation movement will be right to ask why two national organizations are needed. C.F.A. will inevitably divert resources from the community-foundation-led activities of the Council on Foundations.

* Control. It is difficult to imagine more participation and control by community foundations than what occurs in the council. The program agenda of the fall meeting of community foundations is set by the various professional groups of community foundations, and the new shared-leadership plan calls for council staff to be hired and directed by a leadership team of community-foundation representatives.

* Branding and insurance services. C.F.A. suggests that community foundations need a stronger national brand identity and discount-buying services for things like insurance. They fail to mention that the Council on Foundations has been test marketing a branding concept in Michigan and that it already offers foundations access to liability insurance for directors and officers. Will having two national branding efforts involving community foundations be a positive development?

* Been there, done that. In 1964, after 15 years of growth and evolution, the National Council on Community Foundations changed its name to become the Council on Foundations and admitted family and corporate foundations as members. Those community-foundation leaders recognized that the interests of community foundations and those of other foundations were best served through collaboration rather than balkanization. History has demonstrated the wisdom of their thinking.

Obviously, C.F.A. supporters have every right to establish a new organization to meet their specialized interests. Others are equally right to question whether C.F.A. is designed to meet the needs of a few or the broad interests of the field. As in any marketplace competition, consumers will decide.

Emmett D. Carson
President
The Minneapolis Foundation
Minneapolis