What is a Community Foundation?

Community foundations are nonprofit organizations established to meet the current and future needs of local communities. Community foundations offer donors all the tax advantages of charitable giving, the long-term benefits of endowment funding, and the ability to establish a legacy fund in the name of a family or a loved one.

Community foundations provide a simple, powerful, and highly personal approach to giving.

Three special features of a community foundation…

1. You receive personalized service. Community foundations provide personalized service, helping individuals, families, businesses, and nonprofit organizations achieve their charitable and financial goals by offering tools and resources that make giving easy, flexible, and effective. Our donors can create personal legacies via named funds, teaching future generations the value of giving back. We offer involvement in recommending uses of a gift, while providing the option to give anonymously.

We create giving solutions that fit every situation.

2. You access local expertise. Your community foundation is a local organization staffed by people from your community and led by a local board of trustees. This group of people has an in-depth knowledge of the issues, opportunities and resources that shape your community, enabling them to play a key role in solving community problems, while helping donors learn more about local needs in order to make their giving as effective as possible.

We help donors make a difference where it is needed most.

3. You support community leadership. Community foundations play a key role in addressing community needs, now and in the future. We act as a community catalyst, bringing diverse voices and groups together to address local issues, and fostering greater giving and volunteering in our communities. We build endowments to ensure grants support the community forever. We are governed by leaders with strong ties to our communities. Our work ties closely to that of nonprofits; we foster the development of new organizations and programs, support high-impact opportunities, and re-direct funds as community needs change.

Our business is building community.