Accountability Self-Assessment Tool for Private Foundations
Presented by Donors Forum and the Forum of Regional Associations of Grantmakers

The Accountability Self-Assessment Tool is a comprehensive and flexible resource that private foundations (family, independent or corporate) can use to help ensure that they are complying with all relevant federal laws and regulations and to assess how well they are engaging in generally recommended good practices for being accountable to the public.

Download the Tool and Related Resources:

Accountability Self-Assessment Questionnaire
Use the Accountability Self-Assessment Questionnaire to assess your foundation for both legal compliance issues and accountability issues. The questionnaire comes in versions for both staffed and unstaffed private foundations:

• Accountability Self-Assessment Questionnaire for Staffed Foundations (Word document)
• Accountability Self-Assessment Questionnaire for Unstaffed Foundations (Word document)

Self-Assessment Worksheet
The Accountability Self-Assessment Questionnaire is accompanied by an MS Excel spreadsheet to help you tabulate your responses:

• Accountability Self-Assessment Worksheet for Staffed Foundations (MS Excel file)
  
• Accountability Self-Assessment Worksheet for Unstaffed Foundations (MS Excel file)

Legal Compliance Checklist
If you just want to ensure that your foundation is complying with the law, you can use the Legal Compliance Checklist. (All the legal items in the checklist are also included in the Accountability Self-Assessment Questionnaire). The checklist comes in versions for both staffed and unstaffed private foundations:

• Legal Compliance Checklist for Staffed Foundations (Word document)
  
• Legal Compliance Checklist for Unstaffed Foundations (Word document)

Additional Resources
Download these additional resources to help you use the self-assessment tool and follow up on the results of your self-assessment.

• Glossary (Word document) A glossary of key words and concepts used in the self-assessment tool. The glossary is also integrated into the tool using pop-up comments.
• Accountability Resource List (Word document) An extensive resource list to help you learn more about any of the topics and issues covered in the tool. The resources in the list are grouped by the same topics and sub-topics used in the self-assessment questionnaire.

FAQs
Q: There are already a lot of accountability resources out there for foundations. What makes this resource different?

A: The accountability self-assessment tool is more comprehensive than any other resource that we've found. Other resources may address one specific accountability issue (governance, for example) or just one aspect of foundation law (top legal issues for family foundations, for example). But the Accountability Self-Assessment Tool not only covers all the key issues in all key topic areas, but also shows the interaction between legal compliance and accountability.

Q: This tool addresses private foundations. What about community foundations and corporate giving programs?

A: We might consider developing a similar tool for community foundations and/or corporate giving programs, although there are no specific plans to do so at the moment. We first want to assess and learn from the private foundation tool.

Q: The current tool is a print-only version. Are there any plans for an online version?

A: We would like to work with the Forum to eventually develop an online version of the tool, but no specific timeline has yet been developed for doing so.

Q: It would be great if we could compare our self-assessment responses to other foundations of similar size and type. Is that possible?

A: That is not possible with the current print version of the tool, but we do expect that feature to be included in any online version of the tool that we may develop.

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