Giving Compass' Take:

• The Foellinger Foundation sponsors nonprofit leadership development programs in order to position nonprofits for success and fulfill their missions. In 2018, the foundation has it's first Rising Leader graduates from the 2016 Foellinger Leadership Development Initiative.

• How do initiatives like these help empower smaller nonprofits and strengthen relationships between organizations and foundations?  

•  Read about the four ways to build diverse nonprofit leadership. 

“Whatever may be said about human beings, they are, as a whole, a family.”

Our co-founder, Helene Foellinger, stated this publicly in 1954 and cast the vision for the foundation she and her mother would create four years later. They believed that, as individuals and a community, we have a duty to uplift each other in our times of need. The Foellingers also believed in self-reliance and empowerment—helping people help themselves.

Foellinger Foundation enacts this vision in its grant programming and leadership training, positioning nonprofits and their leaders to focus their resources on fulfilling their missions.

We continue to evolve and explore new ways to empower nonprofit leaders to build a better community.

At the core of the most effective organizations, and therefore the most engaged communities, are adaptive leaders.

The amount of time and resources an organization puts into professional development is crucial to effective leadership—and even more crucial for our nonprofit leaders. Yet, according to Fund the People, foundations invested less than 1% of charitable dollars in recruitment, retention, compensation, development, or retirement of nonprofit talent between 1992 and 2011.

In 2016, we launched the Helene Foellinger Leadership Development Initiative, investing more than $800,000 in three different programs for nonprofit leaders: Executive Leaders, Rising Leaders, and Board Members.

As of spring 2018, we’ve graduated two cohorts of Rising Leaders and one cohort of Executive Leaders. These participants completed a variety of assessments that helped them understand strengths, talents, challenges, and motivators.

Read the full article about funding nonprofit leadership development by Cheryl Taylor at Exponent Philanthropy