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. Plus, some community foundations like Communities Foundation of Texas (CFT) oversee significant programs that are improving local communities.
CFT powers several initiatives including the W. W. Caruth, Jr. Fund at CFT, CFT for Business, Educate Texas at CFT, Emerging Leaders in Philanthropy at CFT, GiveWisely, and CFT’s North Texas Giving Day.
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 CFT is an easy way to streamline your giving and establish 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 5,000 nonprofit grants annually. Plus our program staff have deep expertise in issues you care about
- Benefit from due diligence conducted on every nonprofit of interest
- Use CFT’s Searchable Nonprofit Database, a resource for making gifts to local nonprofits, or request curated giving guides to fit your interests
Flexibility
- Stay personally involved in grantmaking
- Incur fewer administrative burdens and cost than a private foundation
- Maximum tax benefits — more than a private foundation
- Invest with over 1,200 other component funds and more than $1 billion in assets
- Donate diverse types of assets like privately held stock, real estate and more
How many community foundations are there in the U.S.?
There are 700+ community foundations in the world. This map depicts how many community foundations there are in each state in the United States. To learn more about each state’s community foundations, visit the Council on Foundations and view the interactive Community Foundation locator.
