Strategic Focal Points for Trust-Based Boards

As the key governing body, a foundation’s board of trustees supports executive leadership and ensures that the organization delivers on its mission as a charitable entity. Beyond their core legal duties (duty of care, loyalty, and obedience), trust-based boards play a vital role in guiding the organization’s overarching strategy and culture vis-à-vis its values.

Because trust-based philanthropy calls on organizations to align their values to culture and structures as much as it does to their grantmaking practices, taking a trust-based approach often requires foundation boards to also reorient their purpose and areas of focus. As a guide for boards on this reframe, this resource outlines the four, non-mutually exclusive focal points—learning, strategy, grantmaking, and imagination—in which foundation boards can direct their time and attention when stewarding trust-based organizations.