Hannah Edwards, director of philanthropy and outreach for the Community Foundation of the Florida Keys, joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about the organization.
Cutbacks at the county, state and federal level will be challenging.
Edwards said, “It’s going to be a tough year, no doubt. I was at a fundraiser for AHEC last night in Key West, and that was nice. AHEC is going to need all the help they can get. This year they were slated to get $975,000 which was cut from the state budget at the very last minute. So they’re in major need, and of course, what they do is so important, providing health care and dental care to children, so I encourage everybody to support them when they can. Across the board it’s going to be a tough year, and we are communicating that to our donors, and we will do the very best we can to get as much money out there as we can. I don’t know that local philanthropy is going to be able to solve this deficit, but we’re going to do as much as we possibly can.”
The Community Foundation supports local nonprofits and the legacy gifts are really important.
Edwards said, “We’re actually doing a challenge right now, where if people add the Community Foundation to their will or to their estate plan, they don’t have to give us anything now. They’re just saying that in the future, we will receive something from them. If they do that, then we will, right now, make a gift to whichever local nonprofit they choose. The level of the gift depends on how much they’re planning to leave in the future, but it goes up to $25,000 that we will now give to their nonprofit of choice, and that’s just a challenge to the end of the year. So that’s a really great way to provide relief right now to your favorite nonprofit, and it doesn’t cost you anything right now. So that’s a really good opportunity for people. We’ve had a lot of a lot of people taking advantage of it, which is great because it’s just a win win for everybody.”
The Community Foundation also has a grant program.
Edwards said it’s “one of the main ways we get money out there into the community. We have a competitive grant program. The grant applications will be up on our website in August, probably around the middle of August, to give the nonprofits a chance to just look them over and familiarize themselves with the questions. Then from September 2 to 30th, those applications will be open, and the nonprofits can apply. Then we have a grants committee who is made up of people from the community throughout the Keys that rates and scores the grants and awards as much money as we have out to all the nonprofits. Once we award the money that we have, we send out a catalog of the applications to our donors who have funds with us, who have donor advised funds that they can grant out of themselves, and they fill in some of those gaps that we were unable to fund. So last year, out of all of our grants program, we with a few of our fund advisors adding to that, we granted out over $700,000 to our local nonprofits with that program. If you look at the whole year with what our donors are also granting out, it was over $2 million that we put into the community last year. So we do as much as we possibly can. For example, our grant awards go up to $20,000 so last year, Womankind got the $20,000 grant, and when we showed the catalog around, one of our fund holders added to that, so Womankind received over $40,000 from us. So that was really great. That went into their clinic in Marathon, which they were just opening, and it was really great for them, because they were able to buy equipment that they didn’t know they would be able to buy, and that really enabled them to increase the amount of women’s healthcare in Marathon. So that’s a really great project that we’re proud to be a part of. I went up to see that that clinic a few months ago, and it’s just it’s so nice and it’s so great that they have that there in Marathon, there was a really a big gap there in Marathon for women’s health care.”
How can people help?
Edwards said, “There’s a lot of ways people can be involved, if they want to donate and they want to get their money right out there into the Keys. If you go to our website, and click on that donate button, that that money goes right into our Florida Keys Future Fund, and 100% of that money will be granted out right into the community. We are evaluating where the need is greatest, and we’re putting your money right there, all of it. So it’s really a good way to give back and get your money out there also. We do have volunteer opportunities as well. We have advisory committees in each region of the Keys, and we have smaller funds for each region, the Lower Keys, the Middle Keys and the Upper Keys and those advisory committees grant out that money. They’re smaller pots of money, but there’s a lot less competition too. I like to tell the nonprofits, don’t forget about those. You can apply for those also. It’s a good way to get a few $1,000 to help you do some project that you want to do and we need volunteers on those advisory councils to help us award money. You could be part of our grants committee evaluating our grant applications. We always like to have people from various regions of the Keys and various fields of work, and all sorts of different people on that committee. So that’s a great way to give back. We can also pair you up with one of our nonprofits that’s looking for volunteers, because many, many of them are. There’s a lot of opportunities to be involved. It’s going to be a really tough year. So I encourage everybody to give back as much as they possibly can to help alleviate this stress on our community. I think we have a very generous donor who’s going to provide a match opportunity for the fall, so your giving will be matched coming up soon. So that’s going to be a really wonderful opportunity as well.”
For more information, click here: https://cffk.org/