Program areas at CCF
Strategic and values-driven grantmaking - in 2022, Common Counsel Foundation (Common Counsel) made just over $37 million in grants to charitable organizations that are advancing effective solutions to longstanding social and environmental inequities, through its direct grantmaking. Founded in 1988, Common Counsel advances equity and environmental health through a combination of direct grant making and strategic philanthropic advising for client member funds and manages projects focused on organizational development, leadership training and sustainability and donor education. Common Counsel partners with families and individual donors to expand philanthropic resources for grassroots groups composed of and led by members of vulnerable communities and social movements. In order to expand the scale of philanthropic resources for community-led groups, Common Counsel utilizes two guiding principles for its strategic grantmaking. First, Common Counsel invests in community leadership to advance meaningful solutions to critical social, economic and ecological challenges. Second, Common Counsel supports increased collaboration through shared campaigns and long-term alliances that serve to amplify the effectiveness of local efforts. For decades, these two strategies have allowed groups to develop community leadership, to advance systemic solutions defined by community members themselves, and to ensure health and equity for everyone.
Philanthropic services -Common Counsel Foundation provides strategic philanthropic advice, grants management and administration, and accounting support to independent foundations that share a commitment to equity and environmental health. Ccf assists its clients in streamlining their grantmaking processes and deepening their impact. In addition to the services already noted, ccf helps clients refine their grantmaking strategy and provides research, due diligence, grant recommendations, trustee support, and legal compliance. Ccf taps community advisors, each of whom has deep connections to community-led organizations and whose knowledge and expertise adds to the knowledge and expertise of ccf's staff. Ccf's community advisors and staff ensure that the organization is aware of the latest innovations emerging from local communities and of pioneering solutions developed by local leaders. Ccf's staff and advisors are able to identify community leaders who have exciting vision and organizations with promising new models and approaches.
Fiscal sponsorship -Common Counsel Foundation's fiscal sponsorship program ensures the health and vitality of the sponsored community-led organizations, and promotes strategic coordination in the philanthropic sector. In 2022, ccf acted as fiscal sponsor for the kindle project, the windcall institute, roadmap, the movement 4 black lives, and color congress. The kindle project seeks to foster creative ideas to inspire and support possibilities for transformational change.the windcall institute supports the development and sustainability of leaders, which is a key to ensuring strong, healthy visionary organizations. Roadmap is a national network of organizational-development consultants dedicated to serving social-justice organizations. Roadmap serves as a forum for peer exchange and innovation among organizational-development consultants. The movement 4 black lives was created as a space for black organizations across the country to debate and discuss the current political conditions, develop shared assessments of what political interventions were necessary in order to achieve key policy, cultural and political wins, convene organizational leadership in order to debate and cocreate a shared movement wide strategy. Color congress is an intermediary and a funder that is building a national collective of majority people of color (poc) and pocled organizations aimed at centering and strengthening nonfiction storytelling by, for and about people of color across the united states and territories.