Are you facing the sun, are you making a difference to the long term future of your community?

It’s true.  We all want to live in healthy communities supporting healthy, effective nonprofit organizations in concert with a deep spirit of extraordinary philanthropy. Truly, don’t we all want that for our communities, our families, our friends and neighbors?

There is one way to lead those efforts in your community — establish endowment funds to support your community. I imagine you haven’t thought of it just that way, but an endowment fund can strengthen local groups and efforts, strengthen individual nonprofit organizations, or even provide college scholarships. And it’s easy through the North Carolina Community Foundation network. We lend our expertise, our fund management and our understanding of local needs and assessment to make your philanthropic dreams come true.

Can it really be that simple to establish an endowment fund? Indeed, we make it our job to help you realize your dreams for others in your community. Can you imagine making strategic grants to your local nonprofit organizations, or sending students to college on scholarships? While you are thinking about it, about your community, the needs in your community think about this. Last year through our network of 66 counties, we provided $882,200 in scholarships and educational grants.  Those scholarships are among grants totaling $4.6 million that NCCF has awarded to nonprofits across North Carolina in the past fiscal year 2009-2010. And we will award scholarships and make grants this year, next year and the year after. And it’s all because someone, just like you, had an idea about how to help his or her community.

Recently we worked with a group of high school graduates to establish a scholarship in memory of a former high school — to date 37 of 46 graduating classes have financially supported the scholarship. Or how about the library that established an endowment fund to permanently support its operations and special programs?  There also was the donor who was deeply concerned about educating children and rural needs and made a bequest to establish a fund to support those local needs.  Those are just a few examples of new funds established in the past several months — those folks were realizing dreams, strengthening their communities and helping the people in their communities.  It all started with one person and one idea.

You too can be the catalyst in your community.  Your ideas can make a difference.  Give me a call, send me an email or let’s just blog!