Tri-City Community Foundation “building resilient community”

By Jessica Vaughn
Posted 4/25/19

FOLEY - During the South Baldwin Chamber of Commerce’s April 23 Leadership Series, the community welcomed Community Foundation of South Alabama President/CEO Rebecca Byrne to speak about her …

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Tri-City Community Foundation “building resilient community”

Posted

FOLEY - During the South Baldwin Chamber of Commerce’s April 23 Leadership Series, the community welcomed Community Foundation of South Alabama President/CEO Rebecca Byrne to speak about her organization as well as its affiliate, the Tri-City Community Foundation.

But first, what exactly is a community foundation?

“Community Foundations play a role in strengthening communities,” said Byrne. “It brings people together and collaborates with other nonprofits and elected officials to make things happen that strengthen our communities.”

Since its inception, the Community Foundation of South Alabama has awarded over $79 million in scholarships and grants throughout the eight counties that it serves. Community foundations help a community by allowing individuals or businesses to create specific funds or donate to existing funds within their communities with ease.

“What is your passion?” Byrne asked the audience. “It could be cancer research. It could be creating a scholarship for the memory of a child whose life was cut short. It could be providing mentorship for a young man in high school who doesn’t quite understand the importance of a high school diploma. Whatever it is, there’s the capacity to do that and to volley your passion in creating a fund through the community foundation that enables you to do that charitable giving.”

There are no dates on funds begun through the community foundation, giving donors the peace of mind that any fund they create or donate to will be in place and established forever. If over time a nonprofit goes out of business or changes its mission, then the community foundation works with donors to redirect their funds to another nonprofit that meets the donor’s charitable goals.

“We recognize that we are a foundation with eight counties, and we knew that we could not provide all of the services that we needed to or wanted to in order to take care of all the needs of Southwest Alabama,” Byrne said. “The foundation in Mobile is a small staff that has the role of doing a lot of the administrative responsibilities, but the goal is to make charitable giving easy, to make it efficient, to make it fun for the donors so that they don’t have the responsibility of doing the administrative stuff, we’ll take care of all those needs. We take care of the audit, of all the accounting, of all the necessary investments, we submit all the distributions; but we also realized that we were not reaching all of our communities.”

Thus, affiliate community foundations were born. With these types of foundations, the Community Foundation of South Alabama only serves as the back office or the administrative staff, while it is individual communities who are leading and making decisions on where nonprofit dollars are being spent. The Tri-City Community Foundation was created in July 2018 and serves Foley, Gulf Shores, Orange Beach, and surrounding communities.

In order to start an affiliated community foundation, an initial $25,000 is needed to create a community endowment fund that is able to be distributed to other nonprofits, churches, schools, and government entities. A group of local leaders typically begins this fund to kick off the foundation.

“A group of local leaders comes together to discern what the area focus will be and where they want these grants to go,” said Byrne. “The concept is that local leaders know best, local leaders know what the needs are, they recognize the emerging trends in the community and know what the area’s focus needs to be, as well as the length of time on which the community needs to focus on something. What we see as important for this area is building resiliency.”

Thanks to the creation of the Erie Hall Meyer Charitable Fund and individual contributors, the Tri-City Community Foundation has a little over $300,000 in its community endowment fund and is continuing to grow, and over $750,000 in other individual funds dedicated to charitable giving. Any donor who wishes to set up their own personal charitable fund can also contribute to the community endowment fund, helping the community two-fold.

Some of the funds available through the Tri-City Community Foundation are: Donor-Advised funds, Business-Advised funds, designated funds, scholarship funds, agency funds, field of interest funds, and unrestricted funds. Aside from the traditional donation of money, the Tri-City Community Foundation also accepts closely held and restricted stock, oil, gas, and mineral rights, gifts of life insurance, business/partnership interests, real estate, retirement plan assets, and tangible personal property as charitable giving.

“Greater giving starts here,” Byrne said. “It’s a greater impact, it’s a greater joy, and it’s an incredible opportunity for you as a community. We know that collectively we can do so much more than we can individually, so as part of a community the mission of the Tri-City Community Foundation is to build a resilient community that will be here for generations to come.”

To learn more about the Community Foundation of South Alabama and all its offerings, check out the website at communityfoundationsa.org.

To learn more about the South Baldwin Chamber of Commerce and its events and memberships, check out the website at www.southbaldwinchamber.com.