Donors establish funds at the Community Foundation for many reasons. Here are a few:

Permanence and Stability: Your Gift Will Keep Giving

Many donors want to know that the things they care about—a place, a community service, an institution—will be supported long after they are gone. The Community Foundation exists as a community savings account making sure that your gift will do good work, now and in the future. The Foundation honors and protects the intentions of its donors in perpetuity.

Flexibility: Your Gift May Be Designated For One Specific Purpose or For Many.
Establishing a fund allows you to address multiple interests. The Community Foundation supports a broad base of community projects and services, including the arts, the environment, health and human services, women's issues, economic development, literacy and youth.

Relevance: Your Gift Will Meet Changing Community Needs
You may design your gift around general or very specific goals.  Many donors place no restrictions on how funds are to be used. Even if the current intent of your gift becomes obsolete, the Community Foundation will ensure that the fund continues to address emerging community needs.  For more information on the unique structural feature that makes this flexibility possible, click here to learn about the Variance Power that is a part of each of our fund agreements.

Commemoration or Anonymity: Gifts Can Honor a Loved One or Associate or Remain Anonymous
The Community Foundation will make grants from your fund respectful to your wishes.  Some donors put their names or their family’s names on their fund.  Others put names on their funds which mask their identity as the donors.  We can even accommodate special requests for anonymity.   

Tax Advantage: Contributions Will Ease Your Tax Burden and Provide Financial Benefits

Contributions to the Community Foundation, a public charity, qualify for maximum deductibility for income, gift and estate tax purposes, i.e. 50% of AGI.   Donors who create endowed funds, pass-through funds, charitable remainder trusts or gift annuities receive an income tax deduction that can be spread over up to six years if the gift exceeds the allowable annual limits.

Experienced Investment and Grant Management: Your Fund Will Be Professionally Supervised
The Community Foundation takes its stewardship responsibility very seriously.   We are determined to protect and enhance our assets and yours over the long term.   To design and implement our investment strategies we seek counsel from an investment committee of Trustees and community members with investment expertise.   The committee, in turn, retains professional investment advisors who recommend appropriate asset allocation, select asset managers and monitor performance while exercising portfolio discipline.  Most gifts to a community foundation are pooled for investment purposes, to maximize economies of scale, a fully diversified portfolio and first class investment counsel.   Click here to see information regarding our investment policies and performance data.

Convenience: You Can Take Advantage Of “One-Stop Giving”
The Community Foundation affords you the benefits of having your own separate fund, a “foundation within the Foundation,” that is simple and convenient, without the customary burdens and expenses of a private foundation or trust arrangement. The Foundation provides everything from grantmaking consultation, award letters, record-keeping, investing and annual reporting through an independent audit.

Grantmaking Expertise
The foundation’s program staff is familiar with local nonprofit organizations and with the critical issues facing our community. Foundation staff helps donors research the organizations and issues they care most about. In this way, donors can be assured that their donations will have an impact. Grants are managed according to established best practices.

Variance Power
One of the attractive features of using the services of the community foundation is provision in our By-Laws and in our fund agreements which gives the foundation’s trustees the authority to change a fund’s purpose without going  through a protracted and expensive process of seeking court permission to do so.

The long passage of time can sometimes cause a charitable purpose to become outdated.   You might have heard the story of the wealthy person who died and left a large trust to provide drinking troughs for the horses pulling carriages on Main Street.    Little did they know that in a few years horses had all but vanished from Main Street and the assets in their well-intentioned trust went unused.
           
To avoid the risk of obsolescence, a “variance power” provision is added to all agreements establishing funds with a specific or designated purpose or restricted to a particular field of interest.   It states that the fund is subject to the foundation’s Articles of Incorporation, Bylaws, and policies “including the variance power which allows the Board of Trustee of the Foundation to modify any restrictions or condition on the distribution of assets for any specified charitable purpose or to specified organizations, if, in their sole judgment, such restriction becomes, in effect, unnecessary, incapable of fulfillment, or inconsistent with the charitable needs of the area served by the Foundation.”

Fund holders appreciate this feature which assures them that should the purpose, organization, or need specified as the beneficiary of their fund ever ceases to exist or becomes obsolete, their funds will be used for a new purpose as close as possible to the one named in their original fund agreement.