Putting Best Practices Into Action: A Manual for Youth Advisory Committee Advisors

Between 1988 and 1997, 86 endowed youth funds were created by community foundations throughout Michigan as a result of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation’s Youth Challenge to the Council of Michigan Foundations. Each community foundation agreed to creating a Youth Advisory Committee (YAC) as a permanent advisory committee of the community foundation with the primary responsibility of making funding recommendations for grants from the community foundation’s endowed Youth Fund.

In addition, the Kellogg Foundation supported three other main goals for the YAC:

• To assess needs, assets, and priorities for area youth,
• To promote youth volunteerism and youth leadership,
• To increase the size of the Youth Fund through fund development activities.

Best Practices are operational standards for Community Foundation Youth Advisory Committees updated in 2007 by the Michigan Community Foundations Youth Project (MCFYP) Committee. This YAC Advisor Best Practices Manual is intended to provide YAC Advisors with specific guidelines they can use to work toward being the best YAC Advisor they can be.