What is a Community Foundation

A Community Foundation helps to build and strengthen communities and bring together people

and organizations that want to make a difference. They are tax-exempt public charities that encourage philanthropy and are dedicated to improving the quality of life in the areas they serve.

Individuals, families, businesses, and organizations work with community foundations to create permanent charitable funds that help meet the challenges of changing times. The foundation invests and administers these funds.

Community foundations are the fastest growing sector of philanthropy in the United States today. A community foundation is organized to channel gifts from individual and corporate donors to a variety of charitable organizations in the local community. It is a publicly supported philanthropic institution governed by a local board of private citizens.

Important features of a community foundation:

1. A public, grantmaking charity, dedicated to improving the lives of people in a defined, geographic region.
2. Bring together the financial resources of individuals, families and businesses to support non-profits in their communtities. 
3. Play a key role in identifying and solving community problems. 
4. Offer numerous types of grantmaking programs including donor-advised funds, endowments, scholarships, field-of-interest funds, giving circles and more.