Philanthropy411 is currently covering the Fall Conference for Community Foundations with the help of a blog team. This is a guest post by Mike Batchelor, President of The Erie Community Foundation.
By: Mike Batchelor
As I sit in conference sessions, the message of CFInsights keeps running through my mind. There is so much powerful information being delivered in our conference sessions, I find myself asking “what if each community foundation knew what all community foundations know?” While CFInsights is focused on data, benchmarks, dashboards and ratios, the grantmaking and community leadership sides of our businesses could also benefit from cataloging and sharing of great ideas. I know that’s what conferences, affinity groups and list serves are for, but community foundations have tremendous abilities to make connections, but we haven’t maximized our ability to connect with each other. What if each of us, together, did one good idea presented in our conference? What would that look like and how would we choose? What would this do to our national visibility? Many community foundations in Canada take the pulse of their respective communities through a Vital Signs key indicator project. I learned today they release these reports on the same day. And they pick a date close to national elections. I bet there’s some power of each of them knowing what all of them do!
