Drawing on 30 years of best practices, your peer local education foundations have developed performance standards for members as a voluntary self-assessment and peer review process.
Specific practices in six key areas were identified, all with the goal of providing a strong foundation, sustainable beyond leadership and program changes. Great care was taken to make the standards achievable by small, volunteer-driven organizations yet provide room for growth for more established, larger members. In going through the review process, Consortium members will submit evidence for meeting each standard while having ready access to resources and quality sample documents.
Why Your Foundation Should Participate in Foundations for Excellence Quality Standards
- Improved Effectiveness: Quality standards help set consistent expectations among local education foundation boards and staff, helping to focus on areas of need and make effective use of sometimes limited time and talent.
- Guidance for Growth Areas: Quality standards provide a framework for documenting, communicating and providing training and technical assistance to advance best practices with support from peers and your statewide membership organization.
- Improved Function: Local education foundations exist to serve school districts and local partners in improving K-12 education. Knowing that your programs are effectively serving your students and schools, your board is functioning in a highly-effective manner, you are communicating with mission-aligned messages, and your organizational and business practices maximize limited resources, can go a long way to ensuring your foundation is doing everything it can to support your district in raising student achievement.
Support for Your Local Education Foundation
- Peer Feedback: Leaders from peer local education foundations will provide feedback on submitted documents and ratings in the form of one-on-one consultations.
- Sample Documents: The Consortium Resource Library has vetted sample documents in every standard area that are specifically applicable to local education foundations.
How You Can Use Your Quality Standard Rating
You may share your Foundations for Excellence rating with anyone you wish–your board, district, business partners, the wider community—but the Consortium never will. This process is meant to support your foundation in growing to be a highly-effective organization on common standards of excellence. Sharing the fact that you have participated in this exercise and are striving to continually improve your processes and practices is a badge of honor we hope you can be proud of and use as a benchmark of success for your organization.
Want to learn more?
The 30 Foundations for Excellence Quality Standards
Quality Standards with Evaluation Criteria
Quality Standards Suggested Timeline of Activities
Groundwork for Success: Tackling the Standards as a Small Foundation
Ready to dive in? Contact Tracy.
