by
Julianne Buck
Executive Director
June 23, 2015
June is always a busy grant-writing month. The donor-designed endowed funds that we hold run on a fiscal year of July 1 to June 30th, so we are busy cutting grant checks to the favorite charities of our fund holders.
Some checks are on auto pay because the donor chose a “designated” fund – a fund set up to benefit a specific charity. Examples of this include the Golimowski Scouting Fund, Immaculate Conception School, and Grand Ridge Cemetery. These checks get cut and mailed automatically each year. One benefit is that these organizations know that the check will always come as the fund is endowed, therefore they can plan for it in their budgets.
We also include school scholarship endowments under the category of “designated” if they have an internal scholarship selection committee. These include several funds at Morris Community High School and two for Minooka Community High School. These grant checks are cut earlier in the spring in time for scholarship awards.
Other designated endowments involved foundation staff meeting with staff of the receiving charities to brainstorm and strategize. When the Holderman family sold the “Holderman Hill” property a few years ago, the three granddaughters (Betsy, Nancy, and Jamie) made three major gifts to benefit Grundy County. One was a gift to the Grundy County Historical Society for the new museum building. The second is an endowment at the community foundation to establish the “Bowker-Ostrem-Meadors Endowment for Life-Long Learning at Morris Library.” The third has been set up as the “Holderman-Meadors Endowment for Women’s Health at Morris Hospital” here at the community foundation.
Dr. Bowker was one of their grandfathers and he was a board president and strong supporter of Morris Library. Stella Ostrem was Dr. Bowker’s long-time nurse – the other half of a great medical team! Carolyn Meadors Holderman is the girls’ mother who passed away a few years ago and her name was added to the fund names to honor her and her family. Judge Holderman
This year’s Morris Library endowment funded the appearance of and book signing by Eric Litwin, author of the “Pete the Cat” series. Mr. Litwin is a No. 1 New York Times best-selling author of (to date) four books: “Pete the Cat and his four groovy buttons,” “Pete the Cat rocking in my school shoes,” “Pete the Cat I love my white shoes” and “Pete the Cat saves Christmas.”
This year’s Morris Hospital endowment is funding a portion of the new “Young Hearts for Life” cardiac screening program. With this program, Morris Hospital will begin free screenings for high school students in Grundy County and the communities served by Morris Hospital.
In addition to endowed designated funds, we also steward endowed donor advised funds. These funds were established by donors with a large one-time gift who then were able to claim the charitable deduction at tax time, and now have the leisure of granting to their favorite charities each year. Some of the donors who have endowed donor advised funds make their grants early in the fiscal year, others space it out, and some wait until June.
Come July 1, all of these endowments will have a fresh set of grant dollars to grant out throughout the fiscal year.
We also steward some agency endowments where we rarely cut grant checks because the charity is choosing to let the fund grow uninterrupted so that it will be able to contribute to their budget in a more impactful way in the future. Similar to your personal IRA, these agency endowments grow over time to make annual distributions in the future. Some agency endowments held here at the community foundation include We Care, Evergreen Cemetery, Morris High School Education Endowment, and Saratoga School Education Endowment.
If you have a favorite charity and want to support if forever, even after your lifetime, consider an endowment at the Community Foundation of Grundy County. New funds can be made with a gift of any size and with almost any appreciated asset: cash, securities, real estate, grain, and more.
Your chosen charity receives an annual distribution (forever), you receive the charitable tax deduction, and we do all of the back office work.
If you have questions, please do not hesitate to contact us at 941-0852 or [email protected]. You can also visit us at 102 Liberty Street until August 1st. After that we will be in our new office space at 520 W. Illinois Avenue. Come see us!