We structure and fund technical assistance and training. We document and disseminate innovative ideas, lessons learned, and best practices. We respond to issue-specific needs identified by community foundations. And we are assembling a toolbox to permit broader and more systematic access to our expanding knowledge base. Leveraging By leveraging, we mean enabling community foundations, and the community at large, to leverage human, social, and financial capital.
Risk capital is a scarce commodity even for the largest community foundations.
Our matching grants have encouraged community foundations to venture outside of their comfort zones to test new alliances, new ideas, and new ways of doing business. Since 1994, the Coalition has made 221 grants to a total of 76 different community foundations. Our matching grants have also created opportunities for community foundations of all sizes and at every stage of development to access national foundation resources. Particularly in communities that have not attracted national foundation investment, these grants serve to validate community foundation ventures into new roles and new territory. This, in turn, makes it easier for community foundations to leverage local resources and build new relationships.