ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the value proposition underlying community foundations, followed by discussions of the early and current financial business model of community foundations. It describes the challenges of changing definitions of community namely, the disruption from the Internet and changing consumer behavior that is threatening the community foundation model. The chapter offers ideas as to how some community foundations might adapt to meet transformative challenges. Community foundations likely serve overlapping geographies with varying missions. Community foundations must develop the comfort level to ask hard questions and experiment with new ideas and structures if they are to create new, distinct, and sustainable models to serve their communities. Community foundations that are unable to adapt to the cultural and technological changes that are under way will find it increasingly difficult if not impossible to survive. If foundations fail to meet this challenge, their local communities will lose a valuable asset for addressing community problems.
