What is a Community Foundation?
What is a Community Foundation?
A community foundation is a tax-exempt public charity serving thousands of people who share a common interest — improving the quality of life in their region and beyond. Individuals, families, businesses, and organizations create charitable funds that help meet local and national challenges.
What does a Community Foundation do?
A community foundation receives charitable gifts, manages charitable assets and makes charitable grants. Community foundations offer several types of funds to help donors achieve their charitable goals and to meet community needs.
Why do people give through Community Foundations?
Community foundations work with individuals, families, businesses, and nonprofits to make giving easier, more effective and more enjoyable. Setting up a charitable fund with GWCF is an easy way to streamline your giving and realize your philanthropic goals. Below are just some of the benefits:
Simplicity
- Bring strategy and structure to your giving
- Utilize our staff to support your charitable giving goals with services like family meeting facilitation, business giving strategy sessions or deep research on your interests
- Receive one tax receipt
Maximum Impact
- Leverage our community experts who review more than 1,000 nonprofit grants annually and have deep expertise in issues you care about.
- Benefit from due diligence conducted on every nonprofit of interest.
Flexibility
- Stay personally involved in grant-making
- Incur fewer administrative burdens and cost than a private foundation
- Maximum tax benefits — more than a private foundation
- Invest with 380+ other funds and more than $400 million in assets
- Donate diverse types of assets like privately held stock, real estate and more