COMMUNITY FOUNDATION SURVEY REPORT

A Better Way To Compare And Lead

Q2 2026

Updated: 8/24/2026

The FAOG x Crewcial report draws insights from community foundations across the country, helping fuel smarter, grounded decisions, whatever your mission or endowment size.

 

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FROM OUR DATA DESK

 

Welcome to the new format of the Community Foundation Survey.

Over the past year, many of you have asked for a cleaner, more flexible way to explore and share this report. We listened. Now you can view trends by peer group, more easily compare performance and allocations across time horizons, and download only the visuals you need.

It’s the same data you’ve come to rely on, just easier to work with. No PDF skimming required.

We’ve also made space for fresh insights and quick takes throughout, helping you spot shifts faster. The features we’ve prioritized reflect what we’ve consistently heard from you and your peers: make it simpler to benchmark, easier to pull what matters, and faster to turn data into action.

This is just the start. Thank you for your engagement and input, which will continue to shape what comes next.

 

Jay Burke

Crewcial's Director of Information Management

Longtime steward of the Community Foundation Survey

FEATURED POLL RESULTS

Each quarter, we spotlight a timely pulse-check from your peers, offering a window into how fellow community foundations are planning, adapting, and executing in real time.

What are your investment committee’s top 3 priorities in a formal review process?

The poll surfaces a familiar pattern in IC self-review: dominant focus on portfolio performance versus benchmark and peers, close attention to IPS compliance, and comparatively little weight on the quality of committee deliberation, governance structure, or spending policy. A subset of responses reduces the question to a single answer, with some naming only performance-versus-benchmark and others only the absence of any formal process; neither is the review a perpetual institution actually needs.

Portfolio evaluation and governance evaluation are different disciplines. Both belong in a formal review. Benchmark returns describe what the market did with the allocation; they don’t measure whether the committee is spending its time on the right questions, decision quality is improving, or spending policy is preserving purchasing power on horizons that match the mission.

That distinction sits at the center of Who Evaluates the Evaluators? How Foundations Should Measure the Success of Their Investment Committees, a session Crewcial’s CIO Mike Miller will moderate at this fall’s FAOG conference, drawing on CFO, IC chair, OCIO, and mission-officer perspectives.

 
SHORT TERM PERFORMANCE

This section surfaces near-term shifts across peer groups and portfolio types, helping you track momentum, volatility, and divergence before they show up in long-range trends.

Community foundation portfolios posted a strong second quarter of 2026. Across all participants, the median return was +9.7% for the quarter, lifting year-to-date to +8.7% and the trailing one-year to +17.7%. The exposures that hurt in Q1 became the ones that carried this quarter: US large-cap led (+15.5%), non-US developed rebounded (+10.8%), and emerging markets ran (+24.1%).

Cohort dispersion compressed. Medium-sized foundations ($50–99.9M) topped the group at +10.1%; the smallest cohort (under $25M) sat at +9.5%. ESG pools reversed direction sharply, posting +10.4% after leading declines in Q1. Balanced pools tracked their more conservative posture at +7.5%, trailing both the 60/40 benchmark (+8.5%) and the broad median. Investment-grade bonds barely moved (+0.7%), continuing to provide little cushioning against equity volatility in either direction. The durable read across both quarters is that the portfolios best positioned for both moves are the ones that did not have to chase either.

PERFORMANCE TEARSHEETS

Explore performance and allocation trends by peer group, size, and strategy; then download only what you need. The new middle section surfaces relevant insights across peer groups, setting the stage for future surveys where you can help shape and unpack the most pressing questions.

Median Performance by Strategy

The median foundation returned +9.8% in the second quarter of 2026, with strategy-level results ranging from +7.5% for balanced portfolios to +10.1% for high-equity, no-alternatives, and ESG cohorts. Q1’s pattern reversed cleanly: alternatives-heavy portfolios that protected in Q1 trailed in Q2, as US and non-US public equity both delivered. No-alternatives portfolios (+18.1% trailing one-year) lead the multi-year table, followed closely by high-equity portfolios (+17.8%).

Short-horizon dispersion is real, but compresses to roughly a percentage point across strategies at 10, 15, and 20 years. The immediate quarter tells a stark story; the trailing decade tells a more forgiving one. Both are true, but only one belongs in a construction decision.

HISTORICAL ASSET ALLOCATIONS

This long-view snapshot highlights shifts in asset allocation, revealing trends in equity exposure, diversification into alternatives, and capital preservation across market cycles.

Understanding the Allocation Gap Between Top and Bottom Performers

The allocation profiles of top- and bottom-decile foundations diverged further in Q2 than in Q1. Top-decile foundations now carry 48.4% US large-cap and just 6.8% alternatives; bottom-decile peers hold 28.5% US large-cap and 34.2% alternatives, with the bulk of that in private equity (20.9%). The composition gap has widened structurally quarter over quarter.

Because decile placement reflects trailing three-year returns, not the quarter itself, this widening reflects a structural divergence built over the same window, not a Q2 artifact. That makes the gap informative, though it doesn't prove the top-decile group's larger cap weighting or the bottom-decile group's private equity concentration drove returns; it does support using current allocation posture to gauge whether a foundation's structural stance still fits the committee's risk tolerance and spending needs.

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CREWCIAL INSIGHTS

These short reads—complete with optional audio—offer perspective on the investment dilemmas, philosophical tensions, and evolving capital strategies shaping today’s nonprofit landscape. Future editions will continue to reflect the questions and quandaries you raise through our surveys, so if there’s a topic you want us to unpack, speak up. We’re listening.

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INFORM THE NARRATIVE

Weigh in on the timely topics setting your community abuzz. Your perspective helps us surface what’s actually happening and shape the insights we share next.

This month, we’re exploring:
How are CFs thinking about AI's role in daily operations?

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Be Part of the Benchmark

Help shape the industry’s most trusted dataset on community foundation performance. Join a growing network of peers contributing quarterly data to fuel smarter comparisons, sharper insights, and stronger outcomes for all.

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