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By Richard H. Levey
When community foundation comms teams were surveyed about their biggest challenges, more than 80% listed “explaining what a community foundation is” as a top challenge.
The nonprofit community might have an inside track in describing community foundations. Those in the know might describe them as tax-exempt organizations that provide grants and other services which frequently focus on generating capitol to entities focused on local or hyper-local needs. The specifics of their missions, however, remain elusive: comms professionals gave a median score of five (on a scale of one to 10) when asked whether their board members could effectively share their mission statement and three relevant updates, proof points or significant facts about their foundations.
The roles of communications teams within these organizations go beyond their financing-related operations, however. Duties of these units range from facilitating leadership transitions to crisis communications, managing external messaging through a variety of channels and shaping the storytelling that leads to effective messaging, according to data in Communications Benchmarking Survey for Community Foundations, a new survey-based report from Turn Two, a communications and branding agency that specializes in community foundations and philanthropic organizations.
Community foundations comms teams often focus on local media, with 91% pursuing coverage in local television, 72% seeking mentions in local news websites and 62% wanting placement in local television channels. In contrast, only half of comms teams approach regional or national newspapers, 27% pursue regional or national websites and 23% go for placement in regional or national television outlets. Nearly four in five (78%) make personal outreach efforts to local journalists, while one third attempt to place the foundations on podcasts.
Comms teams increasingly find themselves promoting significant changes impacting their community foundations. More than half (54%) anticipate being involved with new strategic plans within the next two years, 41% are going to be part of the team that heralds a website relaunch and 18% are coordinating full rebranding efforts.
Small wonder, then, that nearly 80% cite the need for effective storytelling as a top-three communications priority, and many monitor email deliverability of their messages as key to disseminating these stories. In the latter endeavor, at least, community foundation comms teams seem to be doing well: Nearly two thirds (63%) had email open rates of more than 40%, and just over one third (36%) reported email open rates of more than 50%. Seven in ten report click-through rates of 4% or more, compared with a nonprofit industry average of 3.27%, according to a MailChimp statistic cited in the report.
In addition to comms teams’ strategic functions, they often are called on to play tactical roles, although fewer than might be hoped are prepared for sudden challenges. Almost six in ten (57%) do not have contingency policies for social crises such as mass shooting or public health emergencies, while less than half (48%) do not have plans for internal emergencies such as the death of a key team member or a security breach. More than four in 10 (42%) are not prepared to meet the communications challenges of natural disasters.
A healthy percentage of communications professionals are turning to artificial intelligence (AI) to take some of the burdens off them, with 90% using AI to help with spelling or grammar, and 86% leaning on AI to generate first drafts of content. Similar percentages are tapping AI for imagery (86%), video creation (82%) or infographics (81%).
AI’s widespread use among community foundation comms teams is not matched by guidelines, however. Three quarters of those surveyed do not have a formal AI policy for employees in place, but 70% plan to either implement or update an existing Ai policy within the next five years.
In at least one respect, community foundation comms teams do not vary from any other nonprofit function in today’s landscape: they believe they are under-supported. More than nine in 10 (93%) said they needed more resources to meet their organizational goals, with 49% expecting their budgets to remain either stagnant or decrease during the next two years.
Results are based on 103 responses from communications teams within community foundations based in the United States and Canada. The full report is available here: https://www.turn-two.co/community-foundation-report-2025
