A New Anchor Mission for a New Century

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.

The time is now for community foundations to embrace a new vision that accelerates social progress and rebuilds local wealth.The good news is that a new roadmap for community foundations is contained in a just-published report byThe Democracy Collaborative, A New Anchor Mission for a New Century: Community Foundations Deploying All Resources to Build Community Wealth.

Originally published in the Fergus Falls Journal on December 8, 2014.What could a small regional foundation like West Central Initiative have in common with the likes of the California Community Foundation or the New York Community Trust? Turns out, it is their ability to help revitalize and rebuild

Originally published in the Amarillo Globe-News on November 21, 2014. Amarillo Area Foundation is among 30 community foundations nationwide featured in a new report on nonprofit organizations. The Democracy Collaborative’s “A New Anchor Mission for a New Century,” released Monday, spotlights the way

Originally published in the CSRWire on November 24, 2014.Interest in impact investing is growing more rapidly among community foundations than any other foundation group, reports Peter Berliner of Mission Investors Exchange. In the most comprehensive example of this, Incourage Community Foundation

Originally published in Shareable on December 8, 2014. Ted Howard, Executive Director of The Democracy Collaborative, calls it “the next great advance for American philanthropy”: the embrace, by a small but not insignificant group of community foundations, of an “anchor mission.” An anchor mission

A small, but growing, number of community foundations are starting to embrace impact investing in a big way. That’s one of the conclusions of A New Anchor Mission for a New Century, a report recently produced by Takoma Park, Maryland-based Democracy Collaborative. The authors studied 30 foundations

Though a recent report about innovative community foundations focuses primarily on the U.S., its findings ring true for some Canadian community foundations also doing pioneering work in their field. Vancouver-based Vancity Community Foundation is one of these. Released in November, the “A New Anchor

A key reason that researchers of 30 of North America’s most innovative community foundations were attracted to the only Canadian community foundation highlighted in their report was its collaborative work. Edmonton Community Foundation (ECF) received a spot in the New Anchor Mission for a New

Home solar lights and cell phone chargers in India? Clean-burning cookstoves in East Africa? Next-stage nuclear? Urban lettuce gardens?At the Florida Philanthropic Network’s recent conference in Orlando — a great mid-winter destination! — I was asked to describe some really exciting mission

A primary goal of SOAR is to engage people from across Appalachian Kentucky in defining our own future, and so far there has been lots of engagement. The big question is, where do we go from here?SOAR is at a critical juncture. It can become another publicly funded administrative black hole that has

At age 60, when many of her friends are considering retirement, Josefina Luna is chair of the board of CERO Cooperative Inc. CERO is a five-member worker-owned cooperative on a mission to encourage composting and create jobs in the hard-up Boston neighborhoods of Roxbury, Dorchester, and East Boston

“You can feel the toe of the tsunami,” said one person in the circle. “There’s a great wave rising, and you can feel the power of it, even though it’s just beginning.” The time was mid-December 2014, and I was seated with 20 others in a circle at a San Francisco gathering of community foundations wanting to learn more about impact investing as a tool for building community wealth. Someone else shared a new report on Millennials, and how they are seeking jobs and investments with meaning.