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Community foundations boom locally, nationally

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You've all heard the old real estate axiom about the most important factor of success location, location, location! Well, this is the time of endowment, endowment, endowment, in Springfield.

It's been 10 years since I signed on at Community Foundation of the Ozarks and became an advocate for endowments, and I have been privileged to watch our community gradually embrace the idea.

There is a logical progression in charitable giving. Most of us begin by making random contributions to appealing causes and attending special events. Then we advance to annual giving to one or a few favored organizations, and add on contributions to the occasional capital campaign. Finally, the idea of permanently helping one or more favored organizations comes to the forefront.

At the recent annual announcement luncheon for the foundation, we announced a record 43 new endowment funds established within the Community Foundation. These funds will benefit permanently our community in the many ways specified by their donors, whether through annual scholarships, or grants to help the hearing impaired, or to preserve historic structures and sites in the community.

An incredible 10 new endowments were established in response to a new endowment-building program at the state level. The Missouri Cultural Trust is a program of the Missouri Arts Council to endow the arts in Missouri. Arts or arts-related organizations participating in the new program, under the umbrella of the Springfield Area Arts Council and including that organization, are Springfield Ballet, Springfield Little Theatre, Springfield Regional Opera, Springfield Symphony, Mid-America Singers, Springfield Visual Arts Alliance, Ozarks Public Television, Sister Cities Association and the History Museum for Springfield-Greene County.

This month, the Community Foundation will learn whether it is a finalist in a new endowment-building program offered by the Kresge Foundation, the Partnership to Raise Community Capital. In the first phase of this program, participating community foundations raise $1 million in unrestricted endowment funds, which is then matched by $1 million from the Kresge Foundation. These funds are used to generate grantmaking dollars for community programs.

In the second phase, the community foundation invites nonprofit organizations in its community to sign up for an endowment-building program that matches one endowment dollar for every three dollars raised by the nonprofit. The six communities served by the community foundations receiving Kresge challenge grants will be $10 million richer in endowment at the end of this program.

Endowments are spreading across the Ozarks, too. Communities in southwest Missouri wishing to have the availability of community-foundation services are invited to apply for affiliate status with Community Foundation of the Ozarks. To date, seven communities have done so, and the new affiliate boards are busy building endowments for their communities. Four new affiliates were announced at the same luncheon: Greater Seymour Area Foundation, Monett Community Foundation, Benton County Community Foundation (with headquarters in Warsaw), and Carthage Community Foundation. Existing affiliates are Nixa Community Foundation, Lockwood Community Foundation and Dallas County Foundation.

A final trend in the "endowments, endowments, endowments" theme is emerging among large national foundations that target capital building projects. Some are requiring that grant recipients establish a building endowment to provide for the operation of the building they will endow with their major grant, thereby assuring its continued viability.

With all this activity, is it any wonder that community foundations are the fastest growing segment of organized philanthropy?

(Jan Horton is president and CEO of Community Foundation of the Ozarks. She is proud to be a lifelong volunteer, devotee of the arts, nature lover, environmentalist and, on this occasion, shameless advocate of endowments.)

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