Leadership Training for Foundations & Their Communities

Partnering with foundations to provide professional development to build leadership capacity for greater societal impact.

As a foundation, achieving your mission is paramount. Yet you’re challenged with managing not only the health and wellness of your own internal organization, but that of the communities you serve, as well.

As you stretch to respond to community needs, you may find yourself thinking differently about your philanthropic leadership role. That’s why, to see real impact, many foundations are moving beyond traditional approaches and building scalable models to address systemic change.

Your grantees are already doing good work. To support their efforts and extend their impact even further, increase access to top-notch professional development to build leadership capacity.

Philanthropic Leadership Development to Drive Lasting Change

The benefits of effective philanthropic leadership development are not limited to a single event or conference. Long after the program ends, growth continues to resonate and impact ripples outward, affecting not only the individuals in the program, but also each of the lives that they touch and change as a result.

At CCL, we’re proud to partner with institutional, family, and corporate foundations for philanthropic leadership to drive change, both internally and among your grantees and communities served. We can help you to develop the capacity of leaders at all levels, at every stage of their careers.

Together, we can create stronger and more sustainable systemic social change.

Partnering for Professional Development to Build Leadership Capacity

For us, philanthropic leadership development is more than a mission – it’s a calling.

As a nonprofit ourselves, we understand the need for strong, mission-driven, focused leadership. Together, we can help you and your grantees achieve your missions and build stronger and more equitable communities.

Like you, we are guided by purpose and fueled by passion. Our philanthropic leadership work with foundations focuses on the areas where leadership has the most potential to improve lives and create lasting change and improved societal outcomes.

Combine your talented team with our world-class, research-backed tools and professional development to build leadership capacity in your organization and in the communities you support.

Together, we become a catalyst for change for the benefit of society worldwide.

Let’s work together collaboratively and purposefully to bring this change to where it’s needed most.

Our Philanthropic Leadership Solutions

Whether you’re looking for a partner to co-create a fellowship program that will develop community leaders for years to come, or a scalable yet turnkey development program or solution for your team, we offer a variety of human-centered, research-backed solutions for every budget.

Most Customized

Fellowship Programs

We have extensive experience partnering with grant-making organizations and corporate foundations (for example, with the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, among many others) to design and deliver multi-year fellowship programs focused on driving meaningful change. We can help your foundation provide research-backed, life-changing professional development to build leadership capacity as your fellows work to confront some of society’s most pressing challenges.

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Most Tailored

Custom Executive Team Development

We can craft a custom engagement for your organization’s entire team of senior leaders. We understand the challenges facing your foundation’s philanthropic leadership initiatives, and we specialize in helping you align your leadership and culture to your strategy and priorities. Let us partner with you to provide executive team development designed to help your foundation’s senior leadership team work more effectively, together.

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Most Turnkey

Boundary Spanning Leadership

Sometimes foundations and their grantees create powerful boundaries that splinter groups into Us vs. Them, leading to limited possibilities and uninspiring results. To transform these borders into innovative frontiers in multi-stakeholder organizations, we use boundary spanning leadership. This helps organizations increase collaboration, tear down silos, and mitigate turf wars to increase productivity, efficiency, and innovation.

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Most Scalable

Better Conversations for Equity, Diversity & Inclusion

Whether you’re looking to help your team communicate more effectively across differences, align behavior and beliefs, or address unconscious bias, we’ll work with you to create a human-centered, research-backed experience that develops coaching skills and helps you transform your culture. We can equip your entire organization to hold better conversations every day through a lens of equity, diversity, and inclusion.

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What Our Clients Are Saying

At CCL, we measure success by lives touched and impact made. That’s why the foundations we work with and the leaders we transform consistently tell us the same thing: their experience with us is a game-changer. Through our partnerships with foundations, we’ve helped provide philanthropic leadership training and professional development to build leadership capacity at literally thousands of organizations.

But don’t just take our word for it — take theirs.

One of the specific areas that I identified for improvement through the LTL program was collaboration skills. As a result of this, even though I have strong introvert tendencies, I made a conscious effort to spearhead a multiagency grant application process that resulted in the award of a $568,000 grant to our county for pregnant and parenting young women.

Sponsored Participant
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Ladder to Leadership Program

The Center for Creative Leadership’s mission to develop leaders in their communities to have a positive impact on the world has a strong alignment with our mission, so it was obvious that there was no other group out there that we would want to work with.

Jamie Williams
Director of Scholarships, Coca Cola Scholars Foundation

I tolerate more differences (of opinions, perceptions, actions) as I tell myself that we think and act differently because of our social identities.

Sponsored Participant
McKnight Foundation’s Collaborative Crop Research Program

Giving to CCL scholarships is an opportunity to directly impact the leadership and success of an individual and the lives they touch every day.

Scholarship Recipient Jeff Goodman
VP, Communication & Partnerships, Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation

Meet Our Foundations & Philanthropy Team

Courtney Gentry

Courtney Gentry
Courtney serves as the primary relationship manager for our corporate and foundation partners and creates connections that enable innovative, systemic solutions for some of society’s biggest problems. She also manages CCL’s scholarship program, ensuring that educators and non-profit leaders are given the opportunity to access transformational professional development to build leadership capacity. Courtney helps organizations and individuals worldwide to build a better future.

Vicky Grobler

Vicky Grobler
Vicky focuses on relationship development, design, delivery and facilitation of leadership solutions for clients worldwide. Vicky has dual nationality (South African and French) and has lived and worked in South Africa, France, and Belgium. She has extensive experience in Operations, Client Services, team and people management, optimization of organizational efficiency, Learning & Development, and Organizational Leadership in the banking, educational, relief & development, and not-for-profit sectors.

Let’s Talk About Philanthropic Leadership Goals at Your Foundation

Our experts are here to help. Get in touch about partnering with us to provide professional development to build leadership capacity and scale greater impact. We’d love to hear from you!

Resources on Foundations & Philanthropic Leadership Development

Reimagined Leadership Strategies for the Social Sector

WHITE PAPER

Reimagined Leadership Strategies for Societal Impact

Nonprofit sector organizations can use these reimagined leadership strategies for societal impact to become more effective at solving persistent problems.

Intentional, Inclusive and Interdependent Webinar

WEBINAR

Intentional, Inclusive, & Interdependent: Creating Effective Leadership in the Social Sector

Watch this this webinar to gain a greater understanding of successful leadership in the social sector, based on CCL’s work alongside our nonprofit partners.

image of blocks representing when inclusive leadership goes wrong

ARTICLE

Inclusive Leadership: Steps Your Organization Should Take to Get it Right

Inclusive leadership is an important part of any Equity, Diversity & Inclusion initiative, but it must be executed correctly in order to be successful.

black business woman discussing inclusion in the workplace with coworkers

WEBINAR

Empathy and Inclusion in the Workplace: Imperatives for Your Diversity Initiatives

Attend this webinar and learn how to use the REAL framework to shift mindsets, behaviors, and practices to increase diversity & inclusion in the workplace.

PRESS RELEASE

Armfield Foundation Grant Supports Surry County Schools’ Groundbreaking Leadership Development Program with CCL

An Armfield Foundation grant is supporting Surry County School’s district-wide leadership development initiative led by CCL.

American Express Leadership Academy Alumni Survey

CASE STUDY

Leadership Development for Nonprofit Leaders: 10 Years of Impact

This alumni survey was conducted to commemorate ten years of CCL and American Express working together to provide nonprofit leader leadership development experience and to understand the experiences of participants after they complete the American Express Leadership Academy program.