COMMUNITY FOUNDATION SURVEY REPORT

Thinking Locally

Q2 2025

Updated: 9/2/2025

The FAOG x Crewcial report captures sector-wide performance trends, challenges, and insights, fueling collaboration, innovation, and resilience across the community foundation landscape.

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A return to community-focused, efficient, mission-driven momentum.

 

The Q2 2025 Crewcial x FAOG Survey shows community foundations in forward motion, refocusing, retooling, and doubling down on what matters. With 40.6% naming community engagement as their top priority, foundations are channeling capital into civic infrastructure, emergency response, and local partnerships, signaling a return to community-first roots, backed by action.
 
At the same time, operational efficiency has taken center stage. Foundations are streamlining systems, simplifying grantmaking, and modernizing workflows to stay agile under pressure. Mission-aligned investing continues to build momentum, while donor diversification has taken a back seat (for now).

 

Jay Burke

Director of Information Management

FEATURED POLL RESULTS

Q2 POLL : WHICH STRATEGIC SHIFT IS YOUR FOUNDATION MOST FOCUSED ON OVER THE NEXT 3 TO 5 YEARS?

Community foundations are sharpening their strategic focus, placing greater emphasis on proximity-driven impact and local relevance. Rather than viewing community engagement as a broadly, perhaps too nebulously, defined imperative, many are delineating and operationalizing it through targeted investments in local civic infrastructure and partnerships, suggesting a maturation of, and literal homing in on, mission execution.

In parallel, the focus on operational efficiency reflects more than internal cleanup; it can be read as a bid to future-proof institutions under constrained capacity: streamlining grants management, integrating systems, and reallocating human capital to frontline functions.

Mission alignment in portfolios remains a persistent concern, with the numbers suggesting this is perhaps viewed less as a headline strategy and more as a structural principle. Meanwhile, donor diversification was deprioritized this cycle, potentially signaling short-term confidence (or complacency) around donor concentration risk.

 
SHORT TERM PERFORMANCE

Short Term Performance

With a median return of 7.1% this quarter (just shy of the 60/40 benchmark's 7.3%), the numbers reflect a sector intentionally reshaping itself for what's next.
HISTORICAL ASSET ALLOCATION
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CREWCIAL INSIGHTS

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