Getting Started

Looking around a low-income community or neighborhood, you may have wished that your giving could help change people's lives, strengthen ties among neighbors and propel families toward greater self-sufficiency.  You may have wondered:

• How can I help families find and keep housing? 
• How can I help people move from unemployment to work?
• How can I help a neighborhood rejuvenate its community life?
• How can I improve a community's schools so more young people succeed?

If you have asked any of these questions, you have probably also asked:  What can my limited resources do?  How can I get started?  Or, if you have already started:  How can I know that I'm making a difference?

The first answer is:  Your giving can do a lot.  You can make a difference. 

This section is designed to help you get started by offering some basic guidelines for making grants, tracking progress and recognizing your successes.

We won't tell you to whom or how much to give.  Instead, CGR will inform, enrich and inspire your unique efforts to build stronger neighborhoods and communities. 

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Pro's and Con's of Strategies
What impact do you want to have?

Articulating my passion for giving
This section will help you identify and articulate why you give and what impact you hope to have.  You may instinctively know that enhancing the quality of life in your community is your reason for giving. Translating your instincts into a grantmaking strategy and sharing that strategy with others, however, can be a challenge.

Learning about a community
This section will give you tips for learning what you need to know about your community.  No one can prescribe the perfect intervention, grant or program to fit every community. Your task is to learn as much as you can about the strengths and challenges of the community where you hope to make a difference.

Designing a giving program
This section will help you establish a systematic grantmaking approach.  By walking through the who, what, where and how of potential grantmaking options, this section will help target your grantmaking to exactly the place, purpose and people you hope to touch as well as the results you hope your giving will achieve. 

Measuring results

This section will help you assess the difference your support is making.  As a smaller foundation or individual donor, you may have found capital-"E" Evaluation overwhelming, complicated and expensive.  With an emphasis on informing and improving your own giving and the community groups you support, these tips help demystify the evaluation process and help you decide whether and how to hire an outside evaluator. 

Managing risk: finding your comfort zone
Based on a CGR-led session at the 2008 Association of Small Foundatons National Conference, this section will help you consider your tolerance for risk and the tools available to help donors manage that risk.  What seems risky to one donor or in one community may seem less so in another. Understanding one's own tolerance for risk and the unique context in which you give is critical to managing risk--and achieving the greatest impact with your giving. 

New guide for foundations supporting community organizing

Social innovation & entrepreneurship

Explore community giving topics:

• Housing
• Jobs
• Health & Wellness
• Schools & Education
• Safe & Stable Families
• Healthy Environments