Hannah Edwards, director of philanthropy and outreach at the Community Foundation of the Florida Keys, joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about what’s going on with the foundation.
Edwards recently began her new role at the Community Foundation.
She said, “I was transitioning from Habitat for Humanity, which was still very near and dear to my heart, and I will be staying on the family selection and support committee with Habitat. So I get to stay involved and still help the home buyer families out, which is really the best part of that job. So it’s a win win for me.”
There are so many beneficiaries of what the Community Foundation does.
Edwards said, “I am familiar with the Community Foundation because I was in the nonprofit sector, but a lot of people that I told about my new job said, oh, great, now, what exactly do they do? So I realized that I kind of needed to get that word out about what a Community Foundation is and what we do here in the Florida Keys. So what we do is, as we like to say, we connect people, resources and needs through philanthropy. What that means is we act as a community leader in philanthropy and giving. So we connect donors to the network of trusted nonprofit partners here in the Keys. They’re the ones who are on the front lines with facing the greatest challenges here, and we are able to make the donors’ donations have the biggest impact here in the Keys. So it’s really a great position to be in, because we get to work with all the nonprofits. We get to see the amazing work they do. We get to help our donors see the amazing work they do and decide what part they want in that. So it’s very exciting.”
The Community Foundation really is a lifeline for a lot of nonprofits in the Florida Keys.
Edwards said, “We have various funds that donors can give to. We have a Florida Keys Future Fund, which supports grants to local nonprofits throughout the Florida Keys. The Community Foundation of the Florida Keys used to mostly concentrate in Key West and the Lower Keys, but within the past few years, we’ve really expanded to covering the entire Keys, and that’s been really great because the whole Keys needs this. So the Florida Keys Future Fund, the money from that, the projects are funded and selected through our annual grant application process, and we have a committee of community members, and they evaluate the applications, and they pick really great projects, everything from arts and culture, Health and Human Services, environment, education, recreation, animal welfare, youth, everything that we really need down here. They choose really wonderful projects, and that program continues to grow. This year, we awarded more grants than we have ever before. We awarded almost $740,000 to 52 nonprofits in the Florida Keys. It’s amazing. We also have future funds that are specific to certain areas. If you really want to keep your money hyper local, we have a Lower Keys Future Fund, which is Big Coppitt to Big Pine. We have a Middle Keys Future Fund, which is Marathon, Key Colony, Duck Key and then we have an Upper Keys Fund, which is Key Largo, Islamorada, Tavernier, that area. Those are all matched too. So whatever you’re putting in there, it gets matched. So it’s really the biggest bang for your buck if you want to donate and preserve our community, make it a better place.”
People can also leave a legacy by leaving an ongoing gift.
Edwards said, “We have some really great opportunities for donors, especially in planned giving and legacy giving. A lot of people, when they go to a financial advisor and make their estate plan for what happens at the end of their life, they think about the community as well. So when you are doing that, you can set up different ways of taking care of the community through the Community Foundation, and we can really ensure that your gift will be used to provide ongoing support to the organizations and causes that you love. We have a legacy society. So if you join that society, that also comes with a lot of perks and benefits. You get invitations to special events and different types of recognition, and you get to really see the impact of what your money will be doing. We also have other ways that you can give right now. We have a donor advised fund, which is often referred to as a DAF. A donor advised fund, is where you start a fund with the Community Foundation or you could do it through fidelity, or somebody like that. But really, if you really want that local impact, doing it through the Community Foundation is a better way to do it. We invest that money for you so that it grows while you are granting out of that money. So you can come to us and you have your DAF and you can say, I would like to make a grant to this organization, and we will do that for you. So it makes everything super easy. It’s more tax advantaged and a better way than just giving a little check to this organization and a check to that organization. It’s better tax wise, and it just works out better in the long run, especially with the way the new tax laws are, since 2017 you don’t get a tax break if you’re giving under $10,000, so this is a better tax advantaged way to give.”
Donors can also set up an unrestricted fund.
Edwards said, “They can set up a designated fund for a specific purpose or field of interest. They can also start an endowment fund for a nonprofit that they love, or an agency fund for a nonprofit that they love. The difference between the endowment fund and the agency fund is that the endowment is more of a long term fund for that agency, where they could also contribute to it, anybody can contribute to it, and that money gets invested, and they spend about four, four and a quarter percent of that per year, so that it continues to grow, but they can also continue to benefit from it. Also scholarship funds. It is scholarship season right now, and we manage close to 30 scholarships throughout the Keys. So we have all our applications in and our scholarship committee is hard at work evaluating them, and we received as well as a record number of grant applications, we received a record number of scholarship applications this year. So it will be a great year for that too. In addition to all these opportunities for donors, we also support our local nonprofit community in a bunch of ways too. We do the Leadership Success Academy once a year. So that is an intensive training for leadership and governance skill building for board members and CEOs of local nonprofits. We also do our Unsung Heroes luncheon. That is always really wonderful. Every nonprofit in the Keys can nominate their volunteer of the year, and it’s a great way to honor people that never get recognized for all that they do. It’s a really wonderful day. Then we also do a Keys Nonprofit Day, which I have participated in for the last three years as a nonprofit, and now I will get to be on the organizing side of it. I loved going to that because there’s no other way to meet your peers up and down the Keys in the nonprofit community. It’s like a half day where there are seminars and there’s networking, and it’s just a really nice day. It fosters collaboration. It’s actually a really good time to invest in the local community. We just had meetings with our investment company that specializes in community foundations, and they’re doing an excellent job with our assets and everybody in the community here that donates through us, everybody’s assets, they’re really protecting them, and it’s very safe way, in my opinion, to preserve your money and raise your impact to the Florida Keys.”
For more information, click here: https://cffk.org/