Family foundations usually represent a significant commitment of assets and energies. The Lehigh Valley...
Options for Clients
Discretionary Funds
These funds provide maximum flexibility in addressing changing community needs and opportunities. Donors who create discretionary funds understand that the community will change over the course of 10, 25, 50, and 100 years, and they permit the Foundation's Grants Committee to determine how annual grants from the fund will be used.
Area of Interest Funds
Many donors are interested in a broad area of community life- the arts, education, human services, healthcare, the environment and community development. Perhaps they are interested in a specific geographic area---such as Easton---or a specific population such as children at risk. They have the opportunity to create an area of interest fund that will assure that grants will be made to non-profits with missions serving their interests.
Designated Funds
Donors who are interested in supporting one or more specific non-profit organizations may establish a designated fund assuring that grants will be made to those organizations as long as they exist.
Donor-Advised Funds
Many donors wish to be involved with their charitable choices. They want to recommend grants from their fund, vary those grant recommendations, and change their charitable priorities as they wish. A donor-advised fund gives them the flexibility to do so with the option of converting the fund to a different type if they no longer want to make grant recommendations.
Organizational Funds
Many non-profit organizations choose to establish charitable funds that can provide them with an income stream. Some create two types of funds at the Community Foundation: a temporary fund that can help with capital or emergency costs and a permanent (endowment) fund that can provide income over time.
Scholarship and Award Funds
Scholarship funds provide support for education while award funds provide grants to recognize achievement in areas such as teaching, the arts, or scientific research. Grants from award funds must comply with regulations and requirements for grants to individuals.
Supporting Organizations
Supporting organizations are an increasingly popular alternative to the creation of private foundations providing donors with investment and grantmaking latitude of a private foundation and the benefits of being linked to LVCF, a publicly supported organization. Supporting organizations are generally begun with a minimum gift of $3-5 million.
All of the funds listed here may be permanent or temporary.
Temporary funds permit principal as well as income to be used for grantmaking, and it is expected that the entire corpus of a temporary fund will be expended in two to five years or become a permanent fund.
Permanent funds, also known as endowment funds, provide grants in perpetuity. These funds are governed by the Foundation’s spending policy, set annually, to determine what percentage of the fund’s assets are available for grantmaking. The purpose of the spending policy is to preserve the purchasing power of grants over time.
