What’s next for community philanthropy?

The Monitor Institute’s What’s Next for Community Philanthropy initiative aims to engage the U.S. community foundation field in thinking about the future of its model in a way that builds on past successes and explores new approaches – drawn from both domestic and global examples – for serving communities moving forward. One of the tools that has been developed through the project is an exercise called “Finding and Flipping Orthodoxies”, in which “Orthodoxies” are deeply held beliefs about “how things are done,” that may or may not still be true, but that often go unstated and unchallenged and can become blind spots over time. Every organization and every industry has orthodoxies, observe the “What’s next?” project leaders including – and maybe especially – community foundations.

To learn more about the initiative you can watch Gabriel Kasper’s recent speech at the Council on Foundations 2013 Fall Conference for Community Foundations, where he walked conference attendees through an exercise aimed at challenging traditional assumptions and orthodoxies in how they go about their work.