Standards and Effective Practices for Community Foundations
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Home > National Standards for U.S. Community Foundations > Standard V. Part D.

A community foundation performs due diligence to ensure that grants will be used for charitable purposes.
Grantmaking and Community Leadership - Standard V. Part D.
The StandardMethodologiesExamplesCurrent Practice AssessmentKey Design ElementsMonitoring & EvaluationOther Resources

The Standard

A community foundation performs due diligence to ensure that grants will be used for charitable purposes.

Underlying Rationale

Compliance with Internal Revenue Service regulations. As well, donors and the community consider a grant from a community foundation as assurance of the integrity of the grant recipient.

Potential Outcomes

  1. Donors are assured that grants will be used for the purposes intended and comply with applicable laws and regulations.
  2. A grant received from the community foundation is seen as a seal of approval by the grantee and other grantmakers.
  3. The effectiveness of foundation grants increases.


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Please note that these materials were collected prior to the passage of the Pension Protection Act of 2006 so do not necessarily reflect the recent changes in the law. As always, these documents should only be used as a reference in developing your own documents with advice from legal counsel where appropriate. For more information on the Pension Protection Act of 2006, see www.cof.org/hr4.
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