What is a Community Foundation?
Community foundations represent and support specific geographic areas by pooling donations, creating permanently endowed funds to address current and future community needs through nonprofit organizations’ work. Nationally, community foundations have awarded grants for more than a century, offering significant support to communities large and small. To better meet evolving community needs, the Community Foundation of Herkimer & Oneida Counties has adopted an increasingly flexible and collaborative “community investment” strategy that applies larger-scale funding to address longstanding challenges.
How a Community Foundation Works
Donors
Generous donors with a passion for helping others and enhancing the community they call home become our partners in philanthropy.
Goals
The Community Foundation helps donors to connect what they care about with their charitable resources. Setting goals makes all the difference—for our donors, and for for the community they love.
Gifts
Gifts are made in cash, stock, or other assets, and often receive immediate tax benefits. The Community Foundation provides options for short-term or perpetual giving.
Impact
We help donors navigate charitable giving possibilities, connecting them with nonprofit organizations that match their causes and commitments—the work that will truly make a difference.
Community Investments
The Community Foundation considers its funding—grants, scholarships, and initiative work—as “community investments” that create long-lasting positive community impact.
Endowment
Typically, donations to the Community Foundation become part of a permanently endowed pool of funds, carefully invested to grow in order to meet future community needs, while generating millions to address current challenges.
Advantages
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Knowledgeable staff provides community insight and expertise that makes charitable giving more impactful.
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Strong investment performance over time maximizes the leverage and longevity of charitable giving.
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Customizable menu of philanthropic products provides the greatest available tax benefit to meet individual financial goals.
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Offers donors the opportunity to create a lasting legacy that will help the community today, tomorrow, and forever.
Attributes of Community Foundations
Flexibility
Donors choose what and when to give, and community foundations help find ways to make giving matter most.
Independence
Guided by a volunteer governing board, every community foundation serves its designated community—investing and awarding donor dollars to nonprofits meeting resident needs and building community vibrancy.
Expertise
Each community foundation knows its community well because staff and board members live and work in the community they serve. Closely connected to a unique community, they are local experts who can share knowledge of needs, challenges, and partners with donors.
Dedication
By law, by mission, by their passion for positive impact, community foundations are permanently dedicated to better their communities. Their devotion to perpetual community improvement sets them apart.
Partnership
Community foundations commit to a permanent and evolving goal—to meet community needs and challenges through continuing revitalization and enhancement—by collaborating with dedicated donors and community partners.
Community
“Community” is not just the first word in a community foundation’s name. It defines the organization, from its founding goals to its evolving mission and vision for positive community impact and a better future for all residents.