The Council of Leadership Foundations (CLF) is a professional affiliation of accredited and associated member leadership foundations, today comprising over thirty of the largest cities in the United States. Accredited and associated member foundations of the CLF are strengthened by their affiliation in numbers of ways, including enhanced credibility afforded by national recognition, improved fund-raising ability gained through joint funding appeals, intensified performance derived in association with best practices in the field, and enriched networks of support for the work of leadership in each city.

To date, the philosophy of new leadership foundation development is non-franchise. We believe that core values, commitments, practices and collaborations are what define a leadership foundation, rather than cookie-cutter programs or copy-cat organizational structures. We believe that each city has a unique place within God's kingdom purposes, and that a leadership foundation that is incarnate in that city will have distinctive features that give flesh to those unique purposes. Moreover, the value of the Council of Leadership Foundations is more to be found in the unfolding relationships among foundation leaders than in adherence to a central plan or design.

For these reasons--the God-ordained uniqueness of each leadership foundation and the relational and dynamic nature of our Council--the assistance available to new leadership foundations for their incubation and development must, of necessity, be responsive to that city's peculiarity and flexible in its forms of service delivery.

The Council of Leadership Foundations