CF Insights at the Council on Foundations

September 1, 2023

As philanthropy-serving organizations, both Candid and the Council continually seek ways to center the needs of the sector in what we do. When our two organizations began discussing a potential move, we both saw a clear alignment with our respective strategic directions and a clear benefit for the field. 

Candid recognized the move as an opportunity for CF Insights to have an even greater impact than it does today by building synergies with the Council’s broad spectrum of offerings for community foundations. Candid also saw it as a way to fulfill one of its core strategic objectives: to put resources into the hands of as many organizations that could benefit from them as possible. Given the Council’s large and growing membership of community foundations, our organizations agreed that the Council is in a unique position to expand the reach of CF Insights and thus leverage it to better serve community foundations both now and in the future. We’re excited to add CF Insights to our roster of offerings for community foundations, who are vital forces for change in their communities.  

No. Current CF Insights users will continue to have uninterrupted access to the CF Insights data and benchmarking database at Candid until September 1, and then via the Council through the duration of your current membership term. 

All the data will move from Candid to the Council and be securely maintained. There will be no interruption in access to this data.

For questions about renewal or joining CF Insights before September 1, please contact the Candid team at cfinsights@candid.org.  

For all other questions, you can contact David Rosado, Senior Advisor, Community Philanthropy at David.Rosado@cof.org at any time. David will lead CF Insights at the Council.

For most current CF Insights members, no.

Going forward, you must be an active Council member to access CF Insights. CF Insights will be available as an add-on to your Council membership. The CF Insights “Plus Membership” add-on will cost less than what foundations pay Candid for CF Insights today, but is in addition to Council membership.

Fees for Council membership and the CF Insights add-on are on a sliding scale, based on the operating budget of your community foundation. View current Council community foundation membership rates here.

No. If you’re not a current member of the Council, you will automatically receive full access to all of the Council’s additional membership benefits from September 1 through the end of your current CF Insights membership at no additional cost.  

To continue accessing CF Insights beyond your current membership term, you will need to renew by becoming a member of the Council and adding the Plus Membership option (granting you access to CF Insights).  

If your membership renewal date is before September 1, 2023, you will renew with Candid as you normally would to extend your membership and gain access to CF Insights benchmarking tools for another year. We strongly encourage you to renew before September 1 to ensure continued access to CF Insights services. You can find Candid's membership dues table here.

If you’re already a member of the Council and renew your CF Insights membership at Candid before September 1, your CF Insights membership will be extended through the end of your CF Insights membership or the end of your next Council membership term, whichever comes later.  

The Council will provide you with personalized information about your CF Insights and Council membership term and next steps for renewal as we get closer to September 1st.

Community foundations can contact Candid before September 1 about accessing CF Insights.  

After September 1, existing Council members who do not currently use CF Insights can add access to their membership at any time. Council members can also wait until their annual renewal to add CF Insights access on your membership invoice.

Yes! The Council is committed to deepening our collective understanding of the state of the community foundation field and will continue to conduct the survey. Candid recently published the FY21 dataset. The next survey, collecting data for fiscal year 2022 will open in fall 2023. 

CF Insights is the financial and operational benchmarking platform designed specifically for community foundations. With CF Insights, you can:

• Compare your community foundation to your peers. Use CF Insights to:
  • Find an ideal peer group using over 100 different criteria
  • Create and download comprehensive peer datasets
  • Track your community foundation’s comparative growth and performance over time
• Access customized peer benchmarking dashboards, prepared by Council staff to share with your board. 
• Get expert help to fully leverage toolkits to assess your operating model’s sustainability, including:
  • Activity-Based Costing, which helps you assess the true cost and performance of your community foundation’s products and services
  • Economic Scenario Planning, which helps you create forecasts to assess organizational sustainability as impacted by fluctuating market conditions
  • The Interactive Strategy Model, which helps you determine the impact of strategic operational changes on your community foundation’s economics

We’re always grateful for member input. Consider applying for our Community Foundations Advisory Group.