See how you can select a peer group using over 80 different criteria and view reports on data in several important content areas.
Columbus Survey Participants have on-demand access to a select subset of benchmarking reports
All data collected by CF Insights is available to members as criteria with which to build peer groups and as the basis for over 60 on-demand reports.
Foundation Basics:
Geographic:
Assets and Funds:
Expenses:
Contributions:
Grants:
Activity-Based Costing Results:
Administrative Fee Schedules:
CF Insights collects the following fee information by specific product and fund type.
Investment Data from the Colonial Consulting/FAOG Investment Survey:
Colonial Consulting and FAOG provide CF Insights with the results of their annual and quarterly investment surveys.
Contact info@cfinsights.org for more information.
Community foundations of all sizes and types benefit from shared knowledge, and from accessing data and tools that enable better decision-making. The CF Insights team works to bring relevant knowledge to the field, and is focused on helping each community foundation and the field leverage our resources to strengthen performance and community impact.
As a mid-sized community with 11 FTEs, The Dallas Foundation felt understaffed. CF Insights’ data reinforced the feeling with facts.
Using CF Insights' peer selection tool, The Dallas Foundation created a peer group of foundations with similar asset size and composition. The comparative data revealed that Dallas had fewer FTEs than their peers. With data in hand, Dallas went to its board and was successful in making the case to hire an additional staff member in a tight economy.
Has your board or management team recently wondered what other foundations are doing or how they operate? CF Insights benchmarking data can help!
Who are we and who do we want to be?
The Arizona Community Foundation’s strategic planning process tapped a variety of CF Insights resources:
The Community Foundation of Greater New Britain, a relatively young organization, conducted the Activity Based Costing Analysis and compared their results to peers to understand the strengths, weaknesses, and implicit choices built into their current operating model.
Following this close look at their current operations, they began scenario planning to forecast how changes in their foundation's asset levels, donor behavior and staffing structure would impact their economic reality. This forecast was built on feedback from peer learning groups as well as comparative data on staffing, expenses, and giving ratios. Results of the model informed discussions about grant support for additional FTEs from a local private foundation that will help enhance the foundation’s community leadership work.
What tools are right for you? (PDF, 57KB)
Community foundations of all sizes successfully leveraged Benchmarking Beyond Asset Size: New Top 100 Lists to generate positive publicity and celebrate local philanthropy. CF Insights’ lists rank community foundations in ways that go beyond asset size, highlighting local giving and grantmaking activity.
"CF Insights has been a real lifesaver for us. Membership is absolutely worth it! Everybody needs to contribute data because the more data that is in the database, the more we can compare ourselves.”"
Mary Jalonick, CEO The Dallas Foundation
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