Governments can strengthen communities in singularly impactful ways. Yet governments can – and often do – ignore problems, miss opportunities, and even exacerbate weaknesses in our communities.

Whatever your politics, the U.S. House Speaker’s race suggests we shouldn’t rely on this Congress to provide much help for our local concerns. While state policymaking is more reliable, national politics have polarized that work as well. Our local policymaking is done by our neighbors and therefore tends to be a bit less partisan and more focused on ground-level impacts. Yet those neighbors tend to also work day jobs, and their ability to solve significant problems is further constrained by federal and state budgets and policies.

In recent decades, these developments have made effective policymaking increasingly challenging. This is a serious problem for all of us. Because when government is decreasingly responsive to the expressed needs of its citizens, businesses, and non-profits, we are all worse off.

Our community members recognize this. Yet they don’t know where else to turn for help to lead their governments toward understanding, effectively addressing, and helping to solve their regions’ problems.

Community foundations can play this role. Arguably, we must. Because who else is better positioned – and has a fiduciary responsibility – to reliably act in the interest of our entire community?

Community foundations are painfully aware of the increasing need across our communities. We provide grants to help where we can, yet we know grantmaking alone will never meet the need, nor close the growing opportunity gaps. Being proximate to the communities we serve, we have significant ability to help identify what’s needed, and how that help can best reach those it’s meant to serve.

Yet community foundations’ policy leadership potential is largely untapped. Given our long history of avoiding “political” issues, most of us don’t even recognize the immense policy leadership potential we already possess. Or how to catalyze it.

We’ve arrived at the point, however, where it would be increasingly irresponsible for us to refuse to engage on policy issues. We need to explore our potential to guide our communities and government officials toward the policies and actions that will serve our communities, our missions, and our organizations as a whole.

For if community foundations remain mum in this time of increasingly obvious need, who else do we expect to speak for the greater good of our communities? And if we refuse to engage our own civic responsibility, is it right for us to assign blame to the government for falling short?

Fortunately, community foundations are increasingly starting to engage in policy work. Yet it’s still relatively new to our field, and less straightforward than grantmaking. Our biggest challenge (and the biggest concern of our board members) is understanding how we can exercise our policy leadership role – without being political.

If we leverage our proximity to the leaders, organizations, and individuals across the communities we serve, to help find pathways to shared progress on the many issues of concern, would that be political? Or would it just be serving our missions even more strongly, by no longer eschewing our most important potential to serve?

Community foundations can inform and impact their governments’ decisions in ways that are both effective and broadly supported. We know this because many community foundations have already created such impacts – even if they didn't think of it as “advocacy” at the time.

The 2023 series, "Perspectives in Community Foundation Leadership" will examine the key elements of this work – with experts from inside and outside of community foundations.

Ultimately, this series will explore how, from a variety of approaches, community foundations can successfully provide their communities with policy leadership for the greater good. In ways that foster the strength of both our communities and our community foundations themselves.

We hope you can join us. To register for the January 27 webinar, “What is Community Foundation Policy Leadership,” click here.

We hope to see you then!