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Emergency scholarship funds
Good morning, Do any of you provide scholarship students with emergency funds (funds for living expenses, emergency school expenses, etc.)? If so, what is your process like? What are the pros and cons of a program like this? Thank you! Robin Cowles Fremont Area Community Foundation, MI
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Budget Software/Tools/Apps
Our Foundation operates on a calendar year, but we are heavily funded by other foundations so many of our funds have budgets that span over several years. We find that the budgeting tool in CSuite will not meet our needs. We wondered if any other Foundations are using another software/tool or app to supplement their…
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Stripe Fees
I was curious if anyone has stripe fees going into a separate fund at your organization versus going back into the fund the donor is making the donation to. If you do, is it your operations fund or did you create a new fund? I'm also curious if other foundations are covering the cost of the stripe fee if the donor doesn't…
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Best practices - Evaluating Grant Applications
Being new to Foundant Grants - this is our first year - I'm wondering if anyone has any suggestions for doing an informative and useful application evaluation process for the reviewers? We've always used a simple worksheet. Going online with our grant applications, we changed up the application. I want to develop a process…
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Donations via Donor Portal
Do you ask permission from your fund creators if they want their fund 'promoted' in order to receive donations to the fund, or do you automatically make that an option for all funds?
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Is your Foundation using a Letter of Intent to screen grant applicants? If yes, how?
Hello! I am the new Community Investment Officer at the Hamilton Community Foundation. We are considering using a Letter of Intent in our grant application. Does your Foundation use a Letter of Intent, and if yes, how are you using it? Can anyone provide their question list? Does the Letter of Intent streamline the…
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Coffee Talk: Cybersecurity-Staying Safe Online
During Cybersecurity Awareness month, we discussed how to protect sensitive data and maintain security protocols in a quickly changing environment. We hope you will join this discussion and share what your organization is doing to prevent security threats.
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La Crosse Area Community Foundation Hiring CEO Position
La Crosse Area Community Foundation is seeking a CEO with a passion for leading a dynamic, forward-thinking team and organization. The ideal candidate inspires community action through innovative approaches, strategic partnerships, impactful planning, and the development of social capital. Learn more about the position: La…
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Resource or Referral on Board of Directors Training for Grantees
Our Foundation recently held a 2-day conference / event for our grantees. In my post conference survey, the topic many organizations desired to have continued discussion, training or an additional presentation on was the area of Board of Directors; specifically Board Development, expectations of the Board, etc. We are in…
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Data Governance Policy / Data Management Plan examples?
We are creating a Data Strategy cross-departmental team at our CF to address data governance and management (and eventually broader strategy related to our strategic goals). Is anyone willing to share their data management plans or data governance policies? We would very much appreciate seeing other examples. Attached are…
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How has your foundation managed database functions / jobs internally?
Hi, TCF transitioned to CSuite in September 2020 and is seeing the need for a FT role to focus primarily on CSuite, and help our teams use it to its maximum ability. (We are a staff of 19.) I am proposing that the role be focused on marrying our internal operations to our strategic goals with CSuite as the explicit tool to…
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Ending grantee relationships, shifting strategies
Hi folks, I'm looking to connect with other community foundation colleagues who have undergone strategy shifts that made significant changes to grant processes (e.g., decreased grant amounts, sunsetting previous grantee relationships that no longer are strategy aligned). We are shifting discretionary resources to…
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CF - legality of paying a scholarship award to a student's student loan
We have a few funds that award scholarships to the contestants in a pageant or rodeo. These recipients may be older and already have earned degrees or are committing to a one-year reign so are not able to attend college the next school year. Do you pay scholarship awards directly to a student loan? As a Community…
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How to gather updates on awardees for donor stewardship
Hello! As part of our donor stewardship strategy, we use follow-up forms to gather information from awardees. We then use templates to create a summary page that we can share with our donors using the details shared on the follow-ups. However, we have been having issues with the information that the templates pull, so we…
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Capital Campaign Grants
Our CF has typically not considered grant requests from nonprofits for capital campaigns for a couple of reasons, one being lack of unrestricted dollars to make such significant grants. Over the years, our unrestricted pot of grantmaking money has grown and recently we recently considered and awarded a large grant…
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Dedicated Data Entry/Database Manager
Hello, I'm researching how other Community Foundations manage keeping CSuite profiles updated, do you have a dedicated team member? We are looking to hire a dedicated person to do all of our data entry/profile updates + pulling reports and lists and managing campaigns etc. I'm wondering the following Do you have a…
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Scholarship Grant Press Release
Do any of your community foundation's do a post-scholarship grant award press release? If so, what kind of information do you share and more importantly does it get published? 😂 Any examples are appreciated!
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How does your Foundation assess Final Reports from nonprofit and government agency grantees?
Hello! I am the new Community Investment Officer at the Hamilton Community Foundation. I'm curious how other foundations evaluate Final Reports from nonprofit and government agency grantees? We currently ask for the following: Project Goals and Anticipated Outcomes, Attainment of Goals and Lessons Learned, and Measurement…
