Paying the Price of Innovation

Mark Kramer and John Kania

Certainly our communities would be poorer were community foundations to forego the rich range of services they provide. On the other hand, community foundations cannot be expected to sustain these services without paying for them somehow. This 2002 article argues that the time is ripe for a realignment of fee structures with true costs.

Rather than continuing to absorb program costs as part of their overhead, community foundations should view them as a valuable service for which others in the community charge. But making this transition successfully requires a dispassionate look at both the demand for services and the true cost of providing them.

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