When public policy seems to favor the monied and powerful, when citizens of many minority neighborhoods feel alienated and intimidated, we have moved backwards in time....[We] hope that we achieve the greatest possible return on our grants by training, organizing, and empowering people to learn about the policies that affect them and mobilize to be heard.5

-Steven D. Heyman, chair of the board, New York Foundation

Many NFG members have long recognized the value that CO brings to their grantmaking programs. They have made substantial investments in grants and other support for CO groups and efforts over a significant period of time. Other NFG members are testing the waters with initial modest funding for CO groups or projects. And still other members have made grants to groups that include CO as one of several undertakings, or for comprehensive initiatives involving CO. But this grantmaking does not directly support the organizing activities.

Still, overall funding for CO is relatively small when compared with grantmaking for other types of community activities or strategies, such as social service delivery, housing development and rehabilitation, community economic development and community building. Because it considers CO to be an important, if underutilized, strategy for change, NFG devoted its September 1998 annual conference to the subject. The conference highlighted foundation investments in the strategy, to assist funders seeking to assess for themselves the importance and viability of CO.

NFG members took a next step in educating funders about CO by contracting for the development of this Toolbox. Its overall goals are to encourage grantmakers to learn more about the vital contributions that CO has made to broader community development and renewal efforts, and to help grantmakers learn how to undertake CO grantmaking. The Toolbox is one of several publications and resources produced by NFG to provide information and support innovation among grantmakers who care deeply about making a difference for low-income and other historically disenfranchised constituencies. (For information on NFG and its programs, go to www.nfg.org.)