What is evaluation? How can it help your organization? And how can you work more effectively with your evaluator? This handbook is designed to demystify evaluation and help you get the most out of evaluation for your organization. 

CMF released “Impact Connected” as a new publication in December 2019. It celebrates Michigan philanthropy in action – IMPACT – and the powerful results that abound when united - CONNECTED. The 2019 issue features stories of CMF members in four unique journeys:

This resource reviews 14 of the most widely used grants management systems against hundreds of requirements criteria developed with the expertise of consultants, vendors, foundation program officers, and system administrators. For the first time, the guide also includes an interactive digital version to make it easier than ever to compare features, systems, and pricing to help your foundation choose the best software for its needs.

Best practices are operational standards for community foundation YACs and YACers to make the YAC organization and its members the most effective grantmakers and community leaders possible.

YAC Best Practices – A tool from the Michigan Community Foundations Youth Project Committee, this document outlines 14 important standards YACs should work toward meeting each year.

YAC Best Practices Manual – This resource is intended to provide YAC members and advisors with specific strategies they can use to achieve YAC Best Practices.

YAC Best Practices Assessment Brochure – See how well your YAC meets the YAC Best Practices by identifying your committee’s strengths and weaknesses. Then, look for ways you can improve on what your YAC is doing and retake the assessment to track your progress.

YACer Best Practices – This resource, released by the Michigan Community Foundations Youth Project Committee, outlines steps that a YAC member can take to be the best YAC member they can be. It is not expected that each YAC member will meet all 12 of these best practices, but the more YACer Best Practices a YAC member meets, the better their YAC experience will be.

YACer Best Practices Manual – This resource is intended to provide YAC members with specific steps they can take to be effective and engaged YAC members, as defined by the YACer Best Practices.

YAC Advisor Best Practices – The YAC Advisor Best Practices was a guideline developed by YAC Advisors across the state to draw attention to some of the essential duties a YAC Advisor has in assisting in the development of their Youth Advisory Council members and ensuring productivity of the YAC.

YAC Advisor Best Practices Manual – The YAC Advisor Best Practices Manual provides YAC Advisors with specific steps they can take to fully empower their young people and aid in their development as youth philanthropists.

To better understand how community foundations can best respond to the current environment, the Center for Effective Philanthropy asked donors about how satisfied they are with the community foundations with which they work. What matters most to them? What do these donors want from their community foundations?

The research reveals that donor satisfaction is vital for community foundations. Donors who are more satisfied with their community foundation are more likely to indicate that they plan to continue giving and more likely to recommend the foundation to others. The data also show that the strongest predictors of donor satisfaction are donors’ sense of the foundation’s level of responsiveness when they need assistance and donors’ perceptions of the foundation’s impact on the community.

This toolkit provides questions, activities, and practices to help create a more diverse and inclusive youth advisory council.

In Supporting Grantee Capacity: Strengthening Effectiveness Together, we look at how funders approach building capacity with grantees. Through examples from foundations ranging in size, mission, and geography, we explore various strategies for capacity building and the types of awareness that funders can choose to incorporate in decision-making to facilitate informed, thoughtful judgments about strengthening organizations.

What's in the Guide?

• Broadening the Grantee Capacity-Building Conversation: Funders worldwide are thinking about how to strengthen grantee organizations. We provide our definition and approach to capacity building and share important frameworks for the conversation.
• Exploring Investment Approaches to Capacity Building: Foundations approach grantee capacity-building efforts differently and agree that there is not one correct investment approach. We provide a menu of investment approach options along with several examples exploring how and why each has been used in various situations.
• Lenses to Focus and Inform Grantmaking: Decision-making around capacity-building support comes down to the ability to make sound judgments. We share important ideas for funders to consider before determining if an investment should be made and how.
• Knowing Your Own Capacity: Many funders do not truly have the capacity to undertake certain capacity-building efforts themselves. We share five important questions for foundations to reflect on to help inform what kind of capacity-building partner they would be.
• Acknowledging Power Dynamics: Every funder-grantee relationship has power dynamics, which become especially important to recognize in conversations about capacity building. We share suggestions from funders about tuning in to these dynamics and how to create an environment that is as candid and level as possible.
• Assessing the Impact: The Holy Grail: Measuring the impact of capacity building is challenging but important to encouraging greater investment within foundations and to the recipient organizations themselves. We provide process-oriented advice from funders about how to investigate impact from the beginning of a capacity-building engagement and what to do with what you learn.
• Putting It All Together: This guide shares many perspectives about how to approach the capacity building with grantees and also underscores that there are no right answers, only informed judgments. In these two composite case studies, we put you in the analysis and decision-making seat and encourage you to see how your ideas align with those of your colleagues.

Plus, special insert sections on:

• When you're the lone voice for capacity building
• Engaging the right capacity builders
• How to address issues of grantee capacity

Nonprofits can and should play an active role during elections, particularly by educating and activating voters. However, with important local, state and federal elections coming up this fall, nonprofits should take the time to remind their staff about appropriate activity during a political campaign or at any other time. This overview developed by Donors Forum provides important tips and examples of activities that are permissible for nonprofits during an election cycle.

It has been 20 years since the launch of the Michigan Community Foundations’ Youth Project (MCFYP), a groundbreaking effort to spread youth philanthropy throughout Michigan’s community foundations and all 83 counties. In honor of the 20th anniversary, the Council of Michigan Foundations (CMF) commissioned the Johnson Center for Philanthropy at Grand Valley State University to assess the impact of MCFYP.  Drawing on surveys, focus groups, archival documents, and interviews with youth participants and adult advisors and leaders, this report documents the impacts on youth, the participating community foundations, and the Michigan communities.

On April 29, 2012, the Council on Foundations released a seminal report for the corporate philanthropy field,  Increasing Impact, Enhancing Value: A Practitioner’s Guide to Leading Corporate Philanthropy. The guide offers original field research and a new platform for corporate philanthropy, and provides clear and practical paths forward for the future of the field and the role of corporate foundations. That work is guided by a five-point framework:

1. Create a new narrative for corporate philanthropy as an investment in society.
2. Develop an inclusive “operating system” for philanthropic investment.
3. Professionalize the field.
4. Improve collaboration, communication, and knowledge sharing.
5. Mobilize “field level” leadership behind this agenda.