A community foundation is a tax-exempt public charity that serves broad charitable purposes in a community defined geographically.  Community foundations serve to connect donors with charitable projects by providing indepth competitive review of those projects to maximize the impact of donor gifts.

Community Foundations also serve as umbrella organizations by working with all of the specific nonprofits in a community by providing grants, organizational development assistance and administrative and project development help.  Community foundations continuously monitor the broad critical needs of a community and often undertake direct initiatives to answer those needs.

Community foundations work by creating and managing a wide variety of Foundation Funds that can provide significant tax advantages to donors and offer a planned, researched and organized approach to a lifetime of giving.  The funds managed by a community foundation consist of a collection of funds from many different donors rather than from a single donor, as is usually the case with a private foundation.

Community foundations work with all volunteer boards supplemented by staff.  With extremely low administrative overhead, our community foundation maximizes the amount of funds that get directly to the project budget.

There are more than 700 community foundations across the United States, with combined assets of about $35 billion.