Site Search
- resource provided by the Forum Network Knowledgebase.
Search Tip: Search with " " to find exact matches.
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation published this collection of resources, perspectives, and articles on how racism affects our collective and individual health.
Responding to the urgency of this moment in time, Asset Funder Network’s new brief is reimagining and building on past recommendations to map more just paths to economic resilience moving forward.
To bring the framework and recommendations to life, they included eight case stories from local and national funders that are applying an equity lens with a range of strategies to support Relief through Resilience. Four of the funders have employed a two-pronged approach of investing in systems change and programs. Three others are focused on on-the-ground interventions, and another is predominantly investing at the systems level. To support their strategies, they have made changes inward, outward, around, and onward.
This “How to Collect and Share DEI Data” guide is a resource for the field and has been written with nonprofits who want to start collecting their organization’s data in mind. The questions and choices of answers have been carefully considered with expert partners – CHANGE Philanthropy, Equity in the Center, and RespectAbility.
The 2021 CEO Blueprint for Racial Equity will guide you beyond diversity and inclusion commitments to the heart of the business opportunity ahead: addressing the intended and unintended impacts of your products, services, operations, policies, and practices on people of color and low-income communities, with key recommendations across the three domains of corporate influence: within the Company; within the community; within society.
CNJG's President's Reports
The Johnson Center for Philanthropy has developed this new Program Officer Competency Model©. A competency model delineates the knowledge, skills, abilities, and other characteristics (KSAOs) that are required for effective performance in a particular job or profession. They offer this model as a contribution to the field of philanthropy, aiming to elevate the importance of demonstrating core KSAOs over the holding of traditional credentials and formal networks — all in the service of supporting professional and personal fulfillment. The Johnson Center for Philanthropy encourages you to use, adapt, and share the model to map your professional journey, to structure position descriptions, design training programs, and more.

As of February 22, 2021, the coronavirus pandemic has claimed the lives of more than 2.5 million people around the world, with an additional 110 million people infected. And while data such as this serves an enormous purpose in understanding the scale and scope of a disaster, aiding experts in determining needs and directing resources, it remains far from the complete picture of the impact of COVID-19 on humanity.
Philanthropy’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrates that not only can donors be exceedingly generous in a crisis, but they can lead through trust and courage. In this new report, the Center for Disaster Philanthropy and Candid recognize this leadership, as demonstrated by increased overall giving, even if too little of it is in the form of unrestricted grants and funds directed toward Black, Indigenous, and other communities of color. There remains much to be done, especially regarding support for programs that deliver the policy and system changes necessary to redress generations of inequities.

The 2020 New Jersey Philanthropy Benefits & Salary Report provides a valuable benchmarking resource. Developed and compiled for CNJG members exclusively, the report presents comprehensive benefits data specific to New Jersey's grantmaking community, alongside data from the Council on Foundations' annual salary survey. Produced every three years, this benchmarking report is a highly valued benefit of your membership in the Council of New Jersey Grantmakers. Thank you to the CNJG members that completed the benefits survey earlier this year that enabled us to produce this report.
The first section, 2020 Benefits Summary Report, includes benefits data for the 2020 calendar year and covers employment, leave benefits, insurance benefits, and more. We are delighted to also present for the first time in this triennial report, demographic data on the boards and staffs of those that responded. The second section, 2020 Grantmaker Salary Tables: New Jersey, Mid-Atlantic and National Data provides data on compensation across a wide range of positions and grantmaking entities. Thank you to the CNJG members that completed the Council on Foundations’ annual survey on salaries that enabled us to produce this section of the report.

Funders are being asked to show how they are addressing social inequities by specifying what they do and who they are. How does philanthropy begin to embed equity into grantmaking, policies, and culture?
Healthy Communities Foundation has been on a journey to address this question by advancing health equity through a racial equity lens. This report describes that journey and offers practical ways of inspiring action so you can integrate equity into your foundation’s DNA.
United Philanthropy Forum is committed to advancing racial equity in philanthropy. We provide space for our members to connect, learn and share together on how to effectively address racial equity in their work as philanthropy-serving organizations (PSOs), and works to share our members’ learnings with the broader philanthropy field. As part of these efforts, we are pleased to share case stories from our members about their racial equity work.
Case Story
Funders Together to End Homelessness: A Racial Equity Learning Journey
Funders Together to End Homelessness began its racial equity journey in 2016. Its case story explains how the PSO named racial equity in its strategic plan and embarked on a learning journey together with its board, staff, and members to normalize the conversation about structural and historic racism and how it contributes to disparities in the homelessness system. The story also describes how Funders Together created a two-year community of practice, called Foundations for Racial Equity (FRE), that has been a critical part of its journey, and how its codified its racial equity work through the creation of its Commitment to Racial Equity.
Read Funders Together’s Case Story
Listen to Funders Together’s CEO Amanda Misiko Andere talk about her organization’s racial equity journey on an episode of the ForumNation podcast.
Case Story
Southeastern Council of Foundations: An Experiential Racial Equity Journey
In early 2018, the Southeastern Council of Foundations (SECF) along with its board undertook a racial equity learning journey in order to develop an Equity Framework that would describe and define SECF’s character, what it stood for, and what its leaders were willing to fight for. The decision to develop the Equity Framework was the culmination of years of work. SECF’s case story explains how the organization used data to inform the development of its Equity Framework, created an Equity Task Force to lead the effort of developing a Framework, and engaged board, staff and Task Force members in a racial equity learning journey.
Listen to SECF’s President & CEO Janine talk about her organization’s racial equity journey on an episode of the ForumNation podcast.
The templates in this toolkit are designed to help your organization develop or refresh your intended impact and theory of change. They provide an overview of each step and worksheets that guide your team through critical considerations.
The Inclusive Growth ScoreTM provides local planners, governments and impact investors with a clear, simple view of social and economic indicators for any census tract in the United States.

The CCSF report is the field’s most comprehensive and authoritative study on investment and governance policies and practices. The 2019 CCSF studies 265 private and community foundations that represent $104.7 billion in assets. Topics covered include:
- Returns and Investment Objectives
- Asset Allocation and Responsible Investing Criteria
- Responsible Investment Practices
- Fund Flows, Spending and Gifts
- Resources, Management and Governance

The COVID-19 public health and economic crisis has changed our world as we know it. As employers moved to remote work, schools shifted to distance learning, and businesses closed completely, it became clear that the impact on residents, nonprofits, and businesses was far greater than anyone could have ever imagined.
In response to the growing and evolving needs of our region, the Greater Washington Community Foundation established the COVID-19 Emergency Response Fund to raise and rapidly deploy funding to local nonprofits providing food, shelter, educational supports, and other critical services.
From the beginning our goal was clear: to address the immediate needs and reach adversely affected communities, particularly low-income households and communities of color. We know all too well that in a crisis like this, these marginalized communities are hit the hardest, and often take the longest to recover.
In times of crises, The Community Foundation is our region’s philanthropic first responder, bringing together individuals and families, philanthropic peers, corporate partners, and local government advisors to address community issues. Building on our rich history of emergency response work, we grounded our COVID-19 response efforts in a similar coordinated approach.
This report chronicles the steps taken, under immense pressure, to develop a coordinated emergency response effort to support a broad range of needs across the region. Once again this effort has demonstrated that working in partnership and close collaboration with our philanthropic peers and local government advisors is an effective way to manage a response to both urgent and longer-term needs.

Advanced analytical tools are embedded in business and government operations and, increasingly, in state and federal policy. Whether these tools benefit or harm communities depends on their design, use and oversight. Fortunately, advocates for children and families have an opportunity to shape the rapidly evolving field of advanced analytics and create frameworks that make these tools work for — not against — young people.
This brief looks at the rapid rise of advanced analytics and explores the controversies, ethical challenges and opportunities that it creates for youth- and family-serving agencies. As the document’s title suggests, it also presents four principles for identifying effective and equitable advanced analytics tools. To help illustrate these principles, the text presents real-world examples of jurisdictions using data science in ways that live up to — or fall short of — the social sector’s quest to develop better and fairer solutions for kids, families and communities.

In partnership with the Council on Foundations, the National Center for Family Philanthropy has released Balancing Purpose, Payout, and Permanence: Strategy Guide.
How much should we spend? This is an essential question for foundations, and one of the most complex, particularly in moments of change or turmoil. This Strategy Guide invites you to reflect more deeply on how your foundation chooses to balance four factors—purpose, conditions and trends, time horizons, and assets for mission—especially in times of greater crisis or opportunity. It leaves the final decision to you, without judgment for your payout amount, lifespan, or mission.

The Bridgespan Group collaborated with ABFE to co-author "Guiding a Giving Response to Anti-Black Injustice," with additional input from proximate leaders. This memo offers philanthropy potential paths to invest in organizations and movements within the Black-led racial justice ecosystem. It provides principles for giving that can help funders make investments with sustained change in mind, and highlights priority investment areas and example organizations within those areas that represent tangible opportunities. Our list is not exhaustive, but rather a starting place for funders who seek to support Black-led organizations and movements committed to anti-racist social change.

Times of mass mobilization like the uprisings for Black lives and global crises like the COVID pandemic broaden awareness of the work of organizations, collectives, and other groups of people working to transform harmful systems. Some of these groups turn to intermediaries—fiscal sponsors and donor intermediaries—to provide back-office support, grant funding, and other services to support their ongoing work and evolution.
This report explores the ways in which the ecosystem of funders and intermediaries can better support these groups—which we’re calling “constituent-led groups”—who do their work without formal 501c3 status and are often led by and supporting historically oppressed communities.
Today, many constituent-led groups, particularly those that are smaller and geographically isolated, struggle to find fiscal sponsors and other intermediaries that share their values and can provide services that are deeply rooted in racial equity. For a number of reasons, funders—who can’t otherwise support constituent-led groups—often prioritize partnering with intermediaries with a high capacity for scaling services and distributing resources and funds. Though equity values are important to funders in selecting intermediaries to partner with, many funders don’t know what equity-centered services look like or how to support intermediaries in deepening this work.
In this report, we share different ways fiscal sponsors and donor intermediaries have approached deepening equity in their work while meeting the volume of demand from constituent-led groups and funders. We also offer some pathways forward for funders seeking to strategically invest in intermediaries to strengthen their capacity in these areas so they might better serve constituent-led groups.
This resource guide includes various virtual volunteer opportunities, additional resources, and best practices for corporate volunteer programs during the coronavirus pandemic.
This resource will be updated, as CNJG and corporate members collect new information and opportunities to share with colleagues.