Hannah Edwards with the Community Foundation, joined Good Morning Keys on Keys Talk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about the organization.
The Community Foundation works quietly behind the scenes to support the entire community.
Edwards said, “A Community Foundation is really of, by and for the community, and our goal is to connect people, resources and needs through philanthropy. So we are connecting donors with causes, and we all know how hard our nonprofits work down here, and how much they do with very little. So we try to support them as much as we can, and we try to connect them with donors who want to support them as well. We actually have sort of three audiences. We have our donors who we work with closely to help them make the most out of their charitable giving and then we have our nonprofits who we really try to steward and help in any way we can and we also have the larger community, that’s why we’re here. We are for the community.”
There have been $36 million in community grants given out over the years.
Edwards said, “That’s what we do. We are in the midst of our grant cycle right now, so our grants are still open. The grant applications will close on Wednesday at noon. We are not going to wait until midnight this year because we are being kind to Kevin, our wonderful director of community impact, who doesn’t want to stay up until midnight this year, so noon on Wednesday. So try to get it in on Tuesday, if you can. That’s really a better idea, because you go into the portal, there’s always going to be a few last minute things that you need to figure out. But so far, we’ve been getting some really great grant applications. We had a really great Florida Keys Non Profit Day on September 10, and that is an annual event that we put on in conjunction with the Ocean Reef Community Foundation and United Way of Collier and the Keys, the three local funders, we get together and do a nonprofit day once a year, which is a chance for our local nonprofits to get together from up and down the Keys, we don’t all see each other that often, so it’s a really nice opportunity to all get together, to learn and to network. We had a really wonderful speaker this time. Her name is Sarah Gibson, and she’s the founder of a DC based nonprofit consultancy called 20 Degrees, and what she specializes in is resiliency for nonprofits, and helping nonprofits figure out funding streams that they might not have thought of. So it was really a good timing on that. The whole day was really nice.”
With some of the cutbacks, the Community Foundation is more imperative than ever for helping the nonprofits in our community.
Edwards said, “The money that we give out each year in our grant program comes from the money that we raise in our annual appeal every year from our donors. We don’t like to fundraise throughout the year because we don’t want to compete with the nonprofits that we are supporting, so we just do an end of year appeal, and we put that money into a fund, and that is the fund we grants out of. So we can’t increase that any more than we can increase that, but what we do is we give out all the money that we have, and then we take those grant applications and we put them in the catalog and give it to our donor advised fund holders, and we say, this is the need, and this is what we could do. Can you do something on top of that? That is really the way we can amplify that impact. Last year, for instance, Womankind got a grant from us for $20,000 but one of our DAF holders put another big chunk of change on top of that, and that allowed them to really buy equipment for their new office in Marathon and really get that clinic up to speed. So that was amazing. That’s how we try to get more money out into the community. We say, this is what we can do. This is a critical time. What can you do? We have vetted all of these grants and grant applications. We’ve vetted all of these nonprofits. We know they’re solid. We’ve done all that work. What could you do? So that’s how we can amplify that, and that’s what our process is on that.”
The Jean Stearns Legacy Challenge is going on through December 31.
Edwards said, “That’s another way we’re trying to get money out there right now. If a donor in their estate plan, if they want to think about giving back to the community, it’s a really great way to do that. They can name the Community Foundation in their estate plan, and that can be as simple as naming the foundation as a beneficiary on an account, a life insurance account, a retirement account, or it can be adding as the beneficiary in the will, and once we have documentation of that, we will give a grant out to their favorite nonprofit in the Keys right away, and that’s made possible by a gift from Jean Stearn’s legacy. So that’s how we’re trying to get all that money out right now, and we’ve been very successful so far, but we only have until the end of December to get all this money out into the community. So we’re really asking all of our professional advisor partners out there in the Keys to recommend this to their clients, because a lot of clients want to make a charitable contribution anyway, and this is just a great way to do it. When they name the Community Foundation, they’ll sign an agreement of how they want that money, where they want it to go. So it’ll basically create a fund which they can designate to a nonprofit, to an area of interest, to the community in general, however they want to designate that, and then we will steward that money in the future. A lot of times an area of interest is really good, because especially if they’re younger, they don’t know if a specific nonprofit might still be here. So if you love environmental conservation, but you’re not sure what the best use of that money will be when you’re gone, we will make sure it gets used in the best way possible. All of our nonprofits work so hard and they do so much with the bare minimum, and it’s just really the time that we need to support them all, and I am always blown away by the work they’re doing. So get out there support your nonprofits. Great way to do that is through us. Or you can volunteer. You can do whatever you can, but that’s what we’re here to do as well.”
For more information, click here: https://cffk.org/