The CO Toolbox has several objectives:

• To increase attention in the philanthropic community and the broader public to how CO makes changes that benefit low- to moderate-income people and their neighborhoods and communities;
  
• To explain what CO is and how to recognize it, and to show the relationship of CO to other strategies for community change;
  
• To illustrate and underscore the many concrete accomplishments that CO has made in galvanizing ordinary people to work for a higher quality of life in areas like housing, jobs, education, the environment, health and more;
  
• To encourage NFG members and other funders to consider making CO a priority in their grantmaking, and to integrate their CO support with other grantmaking investments for neighborhood and community revitalization;
  
• To provide advice and linkages that go well beyond this text for additional learning about the CO field;
  
• To highlight lessons and promising grantmaking strategies from foundations already investing in CO; and
  
• To share lessons on why and how some grantmakers who had not earlier supported CO decided to do so.

The Toolbox should be useful to a broad range of funders - from small, local foundations to larger national funders; from those beginning to think about how CO might fit with and strengthen their grantmaking to those with years of experience; from those who focus entirely on local community development to those whose grantmaking extends to broader geographic and policy arenas; from those whose grantmaking responds to unsolicited proposals to those who place priority on foundation-determined initiatives.