Introducing the new online home for CF Insights

We’re excited to announce that CF Insights, a service of Candid focused on sharing knowledge and data among U.S.-based community foundations, has a new look and new features.

CF Insights has long provided a home for the timely, accurate, and complete information in which U.S.-based community foundations can ground decisions affecting their operating performance and sustainability. This year, Candid rebuilt the CF Insights website from the ground up to more effectively allow community foundations to access our tools and resources, stay updated on what’s new with CF Insights, learn the benefits of membership, and connect with our team to seek support. Additionally, the site provides an online community platform where members can engage directly with each other in conversation, ask questions, share stories, and more.

Over the years, we at CF Insights have often acted as the connector between community foundation staff who want to gain further insights from each other, or seek context behind the data that we cannot provide. This new online resource will greatly enhance our ability to play that role.

Through the this online member community, users will now be able to:

• Start and join conversations with other members. Community foundations that leverage our database to gain valuable insights into the operations of their peers can now reach out to those peers for additional context by directly messaging them. Community groups will be organized by topic area to foster an environment of collaboration and allow members to connect around relevant issues.
• Share and download resources. Community members will have the ability to upload and download sample files and documents such as fund agreements, spending policies, data presentation templates, and more. The CF Insights team will also share relevant files with members through this platform.
• Request support from the CF Insights team. Members will be able to submit support cases to request custom data sets, peer benchmarking dashboards, technical assistance with our database and online reports, information and support related to our operating model analysis tool kits, and other types of support, all directly from the site.
• Manage their respective CF Insights membership accounts, give colleagues access to the community, access FAQs, and more. In other words, the community adds an entire suite of new benefits for CF Insights members and complements the rich store of data provided by community foundations across the country.

We hope you will visit the new CF Insights and spend some time exploring all it has to offer. And as always, we want to know what you think. Your valuable feedback will help us enhance the site and online community over time, ensuring that we continue to serve the evolving needs of the social sector and our members. Come join us at cfinsights.candid.org.

About CF Insights

In addition to providing the US-based foundation community with resources and connection, CF Insights also offers a benchmarking database of information community foundations provide in an annual survey. Community foundations can use this information to see how they compare with peers in terms of asset growth trajectory, staff breakdown by functional area, fundraising, revenue mix, operating budget, and much more, giving them the ability to base shifts in how they operate on the successes and lessons of others. Candid makes this data available to put community foundations in the best position to effectively deliver on their promise to create positive impact for the communities they serve. Basic data is available to all users; access to more in-depth data requires membership in CF Insights. More than 100 U.S. community foundations are members.

CF Insights also developed the Community Leadership Assessment Tool, a free resource that allows community foundations to assess their engagement in several dimensions of community leadership, such as lifting up community voice, equity, influencing public policy, and more. The Rochester Area Community Foundation was one of the tool’s earliest adopters; you can read about the organization’s experience with the tool in this post by Simeon Banister, the vice president for community affairs.