Arkansas Community Foundation and CFO learn from each other at Springfield-based event

While we have plenty of interaction with other nonprofits in our region, we don’t have an actual peer-to-peer network here for what we do. It’s intentional for community foundations to function as anchors for specific geographic areas.

So, it was great to host the whole staff of the Arkansas Community Foundation in Springfield this month. The Little Rock-based ACF central office of about 14, very similar to our size, came to Springfield for a staff retreat. (For all but one, this was the first time they’d made it north of Branson.)

They were specifically interested in our disaster recovery work in Joplin and other communities and we each met with our counterparts to talk about how we do our jobs.

The ACF is a statewide foundation with 27 affiliate foundations that operate very prescriptively and have part-time staff in addition to central office support. The Community Foundation of the Ozarks serves about two-thirds of Missouri geographically with 49 affiliates, but ours are all volunteer-led with their own governance under our umbrella.

They direct a lot of their grantmaking through donor-advised funds where donors recommend how charitable dollars are spent. We also have generous donor advisors, but a significant portion of our grantmaking uses discretionary funds where volunteer community leaders consider competitive applications.

We are absorbing insights from their recent efforts to streamline scholarship applications from the applicant’s user experience through back-office record-keeping.

And we’re both preparing for large online giving days that are similar in concept, but different in execution. The ACF opens its Arkansas Gives day to any nonprofit across the state and will have some 900 participating on April 6. The CFO will host Give Ozarks Day on May 9 as a value-added service for nonprofits that hold funds with us; more than 225 will participate. We felt sure we’d be equally exhausted in the days that follow!

And we all got a good chuckle about the predominance of women, which is typical in the nonprofit world. Their lone male accompanied all his female colleagues here, which made our four male staff members express their empathy.

The visit underscored one of CFO President Brian Fogle’s favorite aphorisms about community foundations; that when you’ve seen one, you’ve seen one. “It was just so nice to talk to people of kindred spirits,” he said.

Louise Knauer is Senior Vice President of Communications and Marketing at the Community Foundation of the Ozarks.