“When developing our community impact strategy, the leadership at Creature Comforts considered the many options through which corporations typically channel their philanthropy. Ultimately, we decided it was a better decision to partner with existing, trusted institutions rather than create another give-back platform (e.g., a Creature corporate foundation). Having held a donor-advised fund with the Athens Area Community Foundation for years now, we are grateful for our decision. They have provided us precisely the level of control and flexibility our impact programming requires while providing our donors and fundraising partners a tax-friendly giving option.”
Matt Stevens
Creature Comforts Brewing Co.
Here at the Athens Area Community Foundation, we empower philanthropists to support the issues they care most about while making a long-lasting positive impact on the entire community. Our unique structure makes us the only local, flexible, tax-advantaged vehicle for passionate donors who wish to leave a dynamic legacy without losing control of the direction and impact of their philanthropy.
Why give through us? Here are eight reasons:
Permanence and Stability
Your gift will keep giving
Many donors want to know that the things they care about—a place, a community service, an institution—will be supported long after they are gone. We act as a charitable savings account, ensuring that your gift will do good work, now and in the future. The Athens Area Community Foundation honors and protects the intentions of its donors in perpetuity.
Flexibility
Gifts may be designated for one specific purpose – or many
Opening a fund at the Athens Area Community Foundation allows you to support many different interests. Our donors give to a broad base of community projects and services, including the arts, the environment, health and human services, economic development, literacy, youth and more.
Relevance
You can help meet changing community needs
Donors may design gifts around general or very specific goals. Even if the current intent of the gift becomes obsolete, the Athens Area Community Foundation will ensure that the fund continues to address emerging community needs, while maintaining the original charitable intent of the donor.
Recognition for Anonymity
Gifts can honor a loved one or remain anonymous
As a donor, you have the option to name your fund and make grants out of the fund in your family’s name. Don’t wish to be known? We can accommodate requests for anonymity.
Tax Advantage
Your fund provides tax and financial benefits
Since we are a public charity, when you give through us, your donations qualify for maximum deductions for income, gift, and estate tax purposes, i.e. 50% of AGI. Donors who create endowed funds, pass-through funds, charitable remainder trusts, or gift annuities receive an income tax deduction that can be spread over up to six years if the gift exceeds the allowable annual limits.
Experienced Investment Management
You get access to experienced investment management
The Athens Area Community Foundation takes its stewardship responsibility very seriously. We are determined to protect and enhance our assets and our donors’ assets over the long term. When we design and implement our investment strategies, we seek counsel from our board of directors investment committee. The committee, in turn, recommends appropriate asset allocation, selects asset managers, and monitors performance while exercising portfolio discipline. Most gifts to the Athens Area Community Foundation are pooled for investment purposes, to leverage economies and efficiencies of scale. In this way, a relatively modest-sized fund is exposed to a more broadly diversified asset allocation strategy and more sophisticated investment vehicles than might otherwise be possible.
Convenience
We offer “One-Stop Giving”
When you give through us, you get the ability to have your own separate fund – your own foundation within the foundation. You have all the benefits of a family foundation without the customary burdens and expenses of a private foundation or trust arrangement. We provide everything from grantmaking consultation, award letters, and record-keeping to investing and annual reporting through an independent audit. We make it simple and convenient to give through us.
Grantmaking Expertise
You have access to our Local Knowledge and Grantmaking Expertise
Our professional program staff is very familiar with local nonprofit organizations and with the critical issues facing our community, as well as data that can be helpful for informed, local giving. We will help you research the organizations and issues you care most about to help you make thoughtful, informed, data-driven, impactful grant decisions. In this way, donors will be assured that your donations will have an impact.
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