What is an Endowment?

An endowment fund is a permanent, self-sustaining source of funding. Endowment assets are invested. Each year, a percentage of the earnings of the fund is paid out to support the fund's purpose, and any earnings in excess of this distribution are used to build the fund's market value. In this way, an endowment fund can grow and provide support for its designated purpose in perpetuity. When you establish an endowment fund, you create a permanent legacy of support for the organization(s) or causes that you care deeply about.

WHY SHOULD I CONSIDER STARTING AN ENDOWMENT?

Endowment funds are a powerful giving vehicle that offer many benefits to donors and the nonprofit organizations that they wish to support.

Benefit to the donor:

  • Allows the donor to perpetuate their values and charitable priorities by investing in the future

  • Creates an ongoing source of income for the organization(s) or cause(s) that donors care deeply about

  • Creates a sense of immortality through legacy giving and establishing a named fund

  • Can continue gifts made during a donor's lifetime - forever

  • Allows donors to support the local community while simultaneously supporting their personal charitable interests

Benefit to the organization or charitable cause:

  • Creates an ongoing and permanent source of income

  • Enhances stability and prestige by sending a message of planned long-term stability, fiscal responsibility, and financial viability

  • Can provide financial independence from certain economic, governmental, and political forces

A gift to the Community Foundation
continues to give year after year.
How can that be?

A gift given to the Community Foundation is invested enabling it to grow. Each year a portion of the earnings is granted to local non-profits to benefit the community. The principal of the endowment remains invested to continue its growth. As the endowment grows, so does its granting ability.

The growth of an endowment and it’s granting ability is similar to the growth and harvest of an apple tree. An apple seed, like a donation, ais planted and nurtured to grow into a strong, mature tree that produces apples. As the tree matures it produces more apples for harvest year after year, just as endowments provide more funds for granting year after year. All the while, the tree stands strong in the orchard continuing to produce.

Like that tree, our endowments continue to produce, and, over time, the amount granted into the community from your gift will exceed the original gift amount and still continue to fund grants year after year.

That is the POWER of an endowment and its FOREVER impact.