Start A Fund

You want to do some good in a particular field but you do not want to tie your money down to a particular organization, since time changes all things. You set up Your Name Fund with us as a field-of-interest fund. You describe this interest as broadly or as narrowly as you wish. You can make substantial gifts now to Your Name Fund or you can provide a bequest to it in your will or you can do both. We regularly identify appropriate payees using our staff and Board of Directors. If the Fund is operating during your lifetime you can receive periodic reports on the good arising from your philanthropy.

You have been supporting one or more of your favorite charities with annual gifts. You would like to have this support continued after your lifetime. You are planning a new will and could leave each charity a substantial bequest, but the fact of your thoughtfulness might soon be forgotten and, besides, you are not sure the charity will always be performing well in the area that interests you. You set up Your Name Fund with us and, in your will, provide a bequest to the Fund. You ask us to send the income to your favorite charities, specifying the amounts or percentages to each. Donations are sent to the named charities. If one organization ceases to operate or does not give the type of service that interests you, we will keep your gift fresh and vital by finding one that does.

After your lifetime, you want your charitable giving to accomplish the most for the quality of life, regardless of conditions. You believe that a group of living men and women will always be better able to assess current situations than any written documents from the past, no matter how perceptive. You write in your will a major bequest to establish Your Name Fund with us as an unrestricted or all-purpose Fund. You require only that all grants be in the name of your fund and you place the entire responsibility for selecting the most appropriate grantees, year after year, on our dedicated Board of Directors. Grants may then be made in any of the major areas of philanthropy – health, education, cultural affairs or social welfare. These all-purpose funds are the most flexible in meeting the emerging charitable needs.

You would like the advantages of a charitable Fund with us now, but you would like to make suggestions from the time to time on which charities should be supported. In this example, you would like to make a charitable gift but then later play some role in suggesting where grants should go. This can be done subject to specific guidelines set out in tax regulations. You set up Your Name Fund with us as a donor-advised fund. Your contributions to the Fund qualify fully for tax deductibility in the year each is made. You give us recommendations on distributions from time to time. Your recommendation is approved, provided certain criteria are met: the organization must be approved as a legitimate charitable agency by the Internal Revenue Service; the purpose of the grant must be charitable; the organization may be investigated by our staff, either individually or from publicly available documents and found deserving of support; and the proposed grant must fit within the charitable purposes of our organization. Donor-advisors need to recognize that complete control over distributions from donor-advised funds is in the hands of our Board of Directors, which can accept or reject any advice, recommendations or suggestions. We welcome advice from donors and others, but we cannot be bound by it. Federal Treasury regulations require that donor–advisors cannot receive any benefit from such Funds. Consequently, donor advised funds cannot make donations in fulfillment of pledges or purchase tickets or tables for charity events.

You and your friends are greatly saddened to hear of the death of a dear and valued friend. Couldn’t something be done to preserve his or her memory and the great good that flowed from that life? You set up a Fund in our Foundation in the name of the person who died. You ask friends and corporations interested in memorializing that person to contribute to that fund. You dedicate the purpose of the Fund to the field of interest which would have pleased that person. It becomes a permanent living memorial that will be meaningful for years.

You would like your money used to set up scholarships in your name so that deserving young people can obtain an education they might not otherwise receive. You realize that scholarship programs take a lot of administration and have to conform strictly to standards of impartiality and integrity. You set up Your Name Fund for scholarships. We, of course, prefer flexibility so that we can meet the greatest need, but you can, if you wish, specify either the schools the young people come from or the ones they are to attend. The scholarships can be for any level of education you specify. You may designate a selection organization such as the PTA or group of counselors, or the Community Foundation can choose the recipient according to your criteria. You may even set up your own committee to review applications and select recipients for the scholarship. Scholarships may also be limited to certain fields of study, if you so desire.

Instead of scholarships, you would like your money used for a series of awards, recognizing outstanding achievement or merit or contributions in the area of public service. Awards can be very meaningful to the recipients, especially when carefully planned and conducted. Cash awards can be established that are tax-free to the awardees. You set up Your Name Fund and ask us to conduct an award program in your name with the income. If you have specific ideas about the nature of the awards, you tell us. There may be administrative difficulties that need to be worked out.

You are on the Board of Directors of a non-profit organization and have succeeded in raising some money for an endowment. You wish to assure that these hard-earned funds will continue to be endowed for the purposes of the organization and not spent by future Boards on a new project. You set up a permanently endowed fund in the Wharton County Community Foundation. The funds are donated to the Foundation to be held for the purposes of the non-profit donor. The donating Board specifies the type of investment vehicle for the fund (equities, fixed-income investments or a combination of the two) and conditions, if any, under which some or the entire principal may be returned to the donating organization. The Community Foundation can also hold temporary funds for a building campaign or capital project.