Arkansas continues to face troubling challenges as it battles a persistently high infant mortality rate, with recent data painting a grim picture of the state’s struggle to safeguard its babies.
The Arkansas Department of Health defines infant mortality as a statistic that looks at the number of babies who die each year before they reach their first birthday. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) based on data from 2022, for every 1000 live births in Arkansas, there were 7.67 infant deaths — above the national average of 5.7 deaths per 1,000. This places Arkansas with the third-highest infant mortality rate in the nation.
Heidi Klappenbach, visiting nurse in Union County
Similar reports reveal a disproportionate burden of infant mortality among Black communities. According to the Arkansas Center for Health Improvement (ACHI,) deaths among Black infants remain the highest of all racial and ethnic groups, with 10.86 deaths per 1,000 births in 2022, compared to 4.52 deaths per 1,000 births among white infants.
Some efforts to combat infant mortality are underway. The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) created the Following Baby Back Home program for families of infants after their discharge from a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). The program sends healthcare providers to homes, especially in rural areas, to help provide support for new moms.
Newborns in the program often have specific needs at home to thrive, like preemie-sized equipment or other essentials. Some mothers have confided to the program’s nurses that they borrowed car seats, or they have to co-sleep because they don’t have a bassinet.
“Many women are reluctant to have home visits because they worry that the nurses will critique their parenting,” said Heidi Klappenbach, a visiting nurse in Union County. “But I love telling them that they’re doing a good job.”
Klappenbach brings a portable scale to check baby’s weight and talks with moms about signs of postpartum depression, growth and development, immunizations and even checking for smoke and carbon monoxide detectors in homes.
“We want to help,” she said. “I try to connect them to whatever resources they need.”
New nonprofit seeks to amplify the voices of families across Arkansas By Adena White
In early May of 2022, Ashley Bearden Campbell’s pregnancy took a sharp turn. She was admitted to the hospital in anticipation that she would remain on bed rest until her baby’s July 1 due date. Health complications necessitated an emergency cesarean section, and her daughter, Aubrey, entered the world at 28 weeks and five days, weighing a mere 2 pounds, 4 ounces.
“I had a wonderful pregnancy up until I didn’t,” Bearden Campbell said.
Ashley Bearden Campbell
During Aubrey’s 70-day stay in the neonatal intensive care unit, Bearden Campbell remained by her daughter’s side as much as possible. Her concern for the baby was all-consuming, causing the new mom to unconsciously neglect her own mental health. An attentive neonatal intensive care unit nurse recognized the signs of postpartum depression and anxiety in the new mom and urged her to seek help. That pivotal conversation led her to therapy, medication, and a newfound determination to ensure other mothers wouldn’t endure similar struggles alone.
“Had the nurse not pulled me aside, I don’t know where I would be today,” she said.
From that moment, the seeds of Arkansans for Improving Maternal Health (AIM) were sown. Founded in January 2024 and led by Bearden Campbell, AIM is a nonprofit organization with a mission to “raise public awareness, cultivate champions for change, and spur action around the issue of maternal health in Arkansas.” In 2018, 92% of maternal deaths were found to be preventable. Additionally, 48% of Arkansas counties are without an obstetric provider, and nearly half of the 75 counties do not have a birthing facility.
“Through AIM, we created a platform to raise awareness around maternal health and create a space for families who have been impacted by challenges in maternal health,” Bearden Campbell said. “We want to address gaps in the access, affordability, and quality of care for women and infants before, during, and after pregnancy.”
AIM’s immediate priority has been to create a safe space for moms and families to share their stories. Bearden Campbell said these stories — whether shared publicly through AIM’s website or in conversations among family and friends — are necessary to catalyze change. The most effective advocates for improving maternal health are Arkansans who have experienced challenges as a result of poor maternal health care.
“I’ve always believed that stories are powerful, and I’ve seen for myself that sharing my own experience has led to a domino effect of others sharing their experiences,” she said. “Together, our voices will serve as a call to action for policymakers to make maternal and infant health a priority.”
In March, Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed an executive order to create the Arkansas Strategic Committee for Maternal Health. AIM for Arkansas will work alongside other members of this steering committee to improve health outcomes for mothers and babies across the state.
“We’re excited to be included in this mix of organizations that are helping raise awareness about this public health crisis,” Bearden Campbell said. “The governor’s executive order was a huge win for our state, and the positive response we’ve seen from families and other stakeholders shows us how critical this mission is to the future of Arkansas.”
Families who desire to share a video recording or written testimonial about their experiences with the maternal health crisis are invited to upload a story at aimforarkansas.org.
By Kim Dishongh
Allyson Cheatham was anxious when she went for prenatal care during her first pregnancy.
“I felt very judged,” said Cheatham, recently discharged from the U.S. Army in 2011. Young and newly pregnant, she returned home to Arkansas to be near family. “I felt rushed. I felt not heard. As a result, I lost my daughter.”
Cheatham’s experience is not uncommon in Arkansas. Aware that prenatal care in the first trimester is linked to healthier babies, Cheatham made an appointment immediately.
“They said, ‘So it’s just going to be you and this baby. That means you’re going to be on Medicaid, right?’ This is what the provider said to me. I said, ‘Actually, no ma’am, I’m a veteran so I have TRICARE insurance,” Cheatham said.
“They were very cold.”
Allyson Cheatham
No one explained to her why, five months into her pregnancy, she was given a vaginal exam.
“I now know that there was no reason for a vaginal exam to be done at that time, but at the time I didn’t know that,” she said. “I felt a pop and felt a little bit of pain, and I kind of jumped a little.”
Shortly after that, she was back in the doctor’s office. “I was leaking amniotic fluid,” she said. “I continued going to my doctor’s appointments, and they were just awful because they were doing ultrasounds to check my levels, and with every appointment the amniotic fluid was just getting lower and lower.”
She remembers the last ultrasound.
“It was just very quiet. The ultrasound tech said, ‘See her fluid level?’ It was literally sitting on top of her head,” said Cheatham.
Her questions about the possibility of an amniotic fluid transfusion were dismissed.
“I saw a nurse practitioner that day. She came in and sat down beside me, put her hand on my knee, looked at me and said, ‘I’m sorry. You are probably going to lose your baby over the weekend.’ Then she got up and walked out of the room and left me there by myself,” she said.
Cheatham named the daughter she was carrying Amani. “It means ‘faith,’ in Swahili, because I was standing on faith when they told me she wasn’t going to make it,” Cheatham said.
A few weeks later, around Christmas, Cheatham went into labor while visiting her grandmother in southwest Arkansas. Her family took her to the nearest rural hospital, which was ill-equipped to care for her when she began hemorrhaging. She was rushed by ambulance to a larger hospital an hour away. Data from the Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform shows that 60 percent of Arkansas’ rural hospitals lack labor and delivery services.
Cheatham mourned her daughter and vowed to help other women avoid the heartbreak she experienced.
Kirsten Jones, too, made it her mission to support pregnant women. Jones’ son, Omari, was born in November. She is an outreach specialist with the Arkansas Birthing Project, and she serves as a “sister-friend” to other pregnant women in central Arkansas.
“They listen to me,” she said. “We share back and forth, and they will ask me how my baby’s doing and give me tips on breastfeeding and just encouraging words.”
Jones said there were parts of her well-researched birth plan the hospital where she delivered would not honor, and she was unprepared to contest those decisions while in labor. She advocates for other women in labor, hoping to instill in them confidence to speak up when needed.
“Doctors tell them they need a c-section, or they need to schedule one, and they don’t know why. A lot of people don’t challenge the medical system just because we may feel inadequate,” Jones said. “We think the doctors know better. We were raised to believe they’re here to help and heal us, save us, but everyone is different. We need to ask the right questions.”
Jones also talks with other new moms about balancing rest with never-ending childcare chores and about the importance of mental health.
Mental health needs are deeply important to Ashli Humphries-Headley.
Humphries-Headley’s husband, a major in the Army Reserves, was deployed to the Middle East shortly after the birth of their son, Beck, in August 2020.
Ashli Humphries-Headley and Family
She had a good family support system, and she had good insurance, as well. But her newborn son wanted to be held constantly and would only breastfeed.
“I would get maybe three hours of sleep, consecutively. I was by myself, and I had a 2-year-old,” she said. “I wasn’t eating enough, and I felt depleted all the time.”
When Beck was 4 months old, she dreamed she had to choose which of her children to save when a bridge collapsed, plunging their car into the water.
“I remember one night I had a dream that my son was suffocating. He was turning purple and blue, and I couldn’t save him,” she said. “I couldn’t wake up from it, and I was like, ‘That was weird.’ Those continued for about two weeks straight, dreams like that.”
Intrusive thoughts continued; she was exhausted and still her son cried and cried. She remembers putting him in his crib and closing herself in a closet to scream out her frustration. Humphries-Headley, a former pediatric therapist, saw a therapist once a week.
“I was not going to throw my son across the room, but I recognized that I was not OK,” she said. “I told myself, ‘You’re OK. It’s just a bad day, not a bad life.’ But it wasn’t getting better.”
Her therapist declared she had postpartum depression.
“I said, ‘But I’m not sad,’” she said. “I’m not unwell to the point of not being able to get out of bed; I’m not losing interest in things I like to do. I didn’t have the basic signs of depression.”
She sought help from other experts, one of whom diagnosed her with postpartum rage — but knew of no medication or therapy to tackle her problem.
“I needed to get better; I needed to raise my kids,” said Humphries-Headley. “I ended up doing a clinical trial in another state.”
She got better, but the ordeal stole precious time.
“I don’t remember my son crawling for the first time. I don’t remember him starting solid food. I don’t remember him rolling over or his first Easter,” she said. “My earliest memory is of him walking. It makes me feel guilty and sometimes I cry. I was in such a psychosis, but I was high functioning, and I had no clue.”
She knows other women are going through similar situations. “Most therapists don’t take insurance. What if I hadn’t had a therapist to guide me? Imagine the moms who are going through this, who are dying inside, because maybe they’re on Medicaid and their health care cuts off 60 days after they have their babies. I didn’t even know something was wrong for about four months.”
The Arkansas Maternal Mortality Review Committee recommends extending Arkansas Medicaid maternal coverage from 60 days to one year postpartum, “to monitor the mother’s physical and mental health, provide support during the transition, and ensure access to treatment.”
Cheatham has chosen to support women through her career. “That was my driving force to become an RN,” said Cheatham. “My daughter was my motivation for helping other women not go through what I went through.”
Through her work as a mother-baby nurse, she spoke up for one new mom who had had preeclampsia.
“Her blood pressure was through the roof — I’m talking stroke range — and it had been like that for three days,” said Cheatham. “She was going to be discharged the next day and go home.” Cheatham called the woman’s doctor.
“He kind of brushed me off, and I just kept calling him back,” she said. “I finally was like, ‘Listen, I’m scared she’s going to have a stroke and die if she goes home. We cannot send her home like this.’”
The doctor came in to see the woman, who remained hospitalized for four more days while her blood pressure issues resolved.
A 2023 legislative report by the Arkansas Maternal Mortality Review Committee found that hypertensive disorders of pregnancy are among the top underlying causes of pregnancy-related deaths in our state.
Also according to that report, “Ninety-two percent of pregnancy-related deaths were considered potentially preventable.”
Cheatham married her husband, Antonio, in 2018. They have a son, Maverick, 3.
Allyson, Antonio and Maverick
“He’s my miracle baby,” said Cheatham, diagnosed with an incompetent cervix during her second pregnancy.
She wonders if this complication was the result of injury caused during the vaginal exam she had in 2011.
“So, yes, I’m advocating for moms, for babies,” she said. “I didn’t have a voice, but there were lots of things that I saw, that I fought for with my patients.”
By Olivia Walton
What a difference a year can make.
Last spring, Arkansas reached an inflection point. We decided that our last-place finish in maternal outcomes was no longer acceptable. We decided that our mothers, our children and our families deserve more.
Through education and advocacy, there is now a swell of support for improving maternal healthcare, and universal agreement that taking care of moms matters.
Olivia Walton, Founder of Ingeborg Investments
A year ago, our sights were set on a 12-month Medicaid expansion for moms. Now in 2024, we have a signed executive order from Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders that works smarter, not harder, to get women the care they need before, during and after birth.
I’m optimistic that the governor has lent her support to this critical issue, and I look forward to seeing this order in action — it’s pro-family. It helps ensure our kids can thrive in school, and it’s fiscally responsible.
Rather than creating redundancies in coverage, the plan will automatically enroll more eligible women in Medicaid, eliminate gaps and streamline access statewide. A groundbreaking pilot program will also target the five most at-risk counties to increase prenatal care.
Most importantly, the governor has requested that private stakeholders work alongside the state’s Department of Health, Department of Human Services, and surgeon general to develop a strategic plan for maternal health moving forward.
Over the coming months, this is where I see my organization, Ingeborg Initiatives, being most helpful.
At Ingeborg, we are on a mission to empower Arkansas moms by improving maternal health, advancing women’s economic opportunity and expanding access to quality care and early learning opportunities for children.
Our team, led by Harvard-trained perinatal epidemiologist and University of Arkansas professor Dr. Cara Osborne, will work with the recently established Arkansas Strategic Committee for Maternal Health on solutions.
Among our top priorities are those laid out in a new report by Heartland Forward. They include: advocating for more community health workers; expanding access to telehealth; addressing healthcare workforce shortages, including midwives; and increasing reimbursement rates and transparency on costs and data.
In other rural states across the country, these tried-and-true solutions are already in place and working.
In Arkansas, preventing just half of maternal deaths would save the state $872 million a year. This savings could underwrite 11,000 nursing scholarships or fund two new 500-bed hospitals.
As an adopted Arkansan, I’m proud to lend my voice and leadership to Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, the Momentary and Heartland Summit.
But as a mom of three children, I became invested in the state when I founded Ingeborg Initiatives because it was personal for me. Even in the best of circumstances, motherhood is hard. For those without access to care and resources, it can feel impossible.
A year ago, most people either believed that maternal care in the state was adequate, or they didn’t think much about it at all.
Today, they understand that empowering mothers isn’t just a women’s issue. Ensuring that mom is healthy and economically secure is the most efficient, impactful intervention we can make for the strength of our families — and communities — as a whole.
By Kim Dishongh
When a woman is pregnant, there is often no information she values more than the kind that comes from her mother, grandmother, sister and aunts. Those female mentors are not always readily available, however, so the Arkansas Birthing Project works to fill in the gaps.
Zenobia Harris, Executive Director of Arkansas Birthing Project
“We work to establish fictive kinship relationships,” said Zenobia Harris, executive director of the Arkansas Birthing Project. “Our founder calls it ‘sister-friending.’ Some people already have good family support, and they just want extra support, and some people don’t have much support at all.” Sister-friends, women who volunteer to serve as mentors to pregnant women, step in and serve as social support to help improve the chances that moms and their babies will be healthy.
“By being a part of this ‘family,’ you have a lot of people who are looking out for you and who are willing to make sure that you’re going to be okay during this process and afterwards,” Harris said.
Arkansas Birthing Project was founded in 1988 by Katherine Hall-Trujillo. Trujillo, born in Moscow, near Pine Bluff, was a public health administrator for the state of California at the time, and she had ample experience working with women who lacked access to good healthcare during their pregnancies. The group made themselves available for informal conversations about pregnancy and motherhood, and they offered support, too, like rides to prenatal visits.
The Birthing Project has been replicated in more than 70 communities across the United States and in seven foreign countries. In 1999, the Birthing Project came to Arkansas.
“She and nine of her friends bound together in what we call a ‘bunch,’ and they agreed to provide social support to a group of young women who were considered to be high risk,” Harris said of Trujillo. “What they found astounded them. The women gave birth to babies that were at term; they were at good birth weights, there were no ICU stays required of the babies when they were born; moms did better after birth with this extra support…”
The program was recreated within that California community and, eventually, beyond.
“The Birthing Project has been replicated in more than 70 communities across the United States and also in seven foreign countries, including Cuba,” said Harris. “In 1999, the Birthing Project came to Arkansas.”
Arkansas Birthing Project aims for little sisters — the pregnant women who participate in the organization’s program — to give birth to full-term babies, with birthweights of 5 pounds or more.
Sister-friends are volunteers from all walks of life, Harris said.
“We work with sororities, women’s church groups, community clubs — anywhere women gather and work in fellowship — to recruit our sister-friends,” Harris said. “They commit to one year. We make sure that our little sisters have a prenatal care provider, that they attend their appointments, and that they make provisions for themselves and their babies during this time to make sure they have a healthy outcome.”
Arkansas Birthing Project also provides assistance, on occasion, with car seats and cribs and other equipment necessary for the first year of a baby’s life. The organization can pass on donated baby clothing and can provide diapers and sometimes baby formula or breast pumps, as well.
“We certainly work on social supports, things that people need to have a healthy situation, like a place to live, food to eat, a safe sleep environment,” Harris said. “We also include encouraging young women to do some planning for their future. We call it dreaming, and many of the young women we work with don’t have dreams for their futures. Many of our young women are focused on subsistence living — surviving.”
The little sisters are asked to consider where they see themselves and their babies in a year — or in five years — and then encouraged to work on planning how to reach those goals.
Arkansas Birthing Project is funded through grants from organizations like Arkansas Community Foundation and from private donations.
“We have had some pretty lean years, and I’ve often done things out of my pocket because I believe in this,” said Harris. “I think it’s another important component, of all the things that are out there to help women. I think there are different things for different people, and the people that we tend to interact with and attract are people that I call ‘off the grid’ people- people that other people perhaps don’t value as much or feel like they can be as successful. We believe they can.”
Getting a jump on a future “to do” list
is such a good feeling. The team at the Community Foundation can help you with
your clients’ long-term charitable giving plans by putting in place the
structures to receive bequests decades from now.
Consider a case where you’re finalizing
an estate plan for a client who would like to leave bequests to multiple
charitable organizations, but the identity of those specific organizations may
be a moving target over the years because of the client’s evolving level of
engagement with various charities as a donor, volunteer, or board member. In
other words, this client will likely make small changes to the estate plan’s
provisions for charitable giving but leave everything else as is. For example,
a client’s trust could be drafted to provide that 10% of the remaining estate
be divided equally among five charities, which could be listed in the trust
document. But what if, a few years from now, the client wants to add another
charity to that list? Even a small change like this would require an amendment,
which can be time-consuming for both attorney and client.
Instead, the client’s trust document could name their “deferred” fund at the Community Foundation as the beneficiary of 10% of the remaining estate. Then, the client can work with our team to draft an agreement that lists the charities that will share the 10%. When the client wants to add new charities or switch out charities from the list, the client can reach out to the Community Foundation and execute simple documentation of their updated intent for the fund. This process is fast, simple, and FREE. And it allows clients to ensure that their bequests are in line with ever-changing needs in the community.
In some cases, the client may not
intend to use the fund during their lifetime. That’s perfectly fine; the Community
Foundation can establish a “deferred” or “shell fund” to sit dormant and
receive assets only after the client passes away. Your client can still name
the fund whatever they’d like, and the fund agreement can be modified anytime
before the client’s death.
Please reach out to the Community Foundation to learn how charitable funds and other planning tools can help your clients achieve their philanthropic goals both during their lifetimes and beyond.
Gifts of appreciated stock is always a tax-savvy ways to give because capital gains tax can be avoided. Gifts of publicly-traded stock, for example, are easy to transfer to a fund. The Community Foundation team can provide you and your clients with transfer instructions to make the process simple.
As is the case with a cash gift, the Community
Foundation will provide a receipt for tax purposes, and the gift of stock will
be valued at the shares’ fair market value on the date of transfer. When the Community
Foundation sells the shares, the proceeds flow into the client’s fund without
any reduction for capital gains taxes. This is because the Community Foundation
is a 501(c)(3) charitable organization and therefore does not pay income tax.
That would not have been the case, however, if the client had sold the stock
first and then transferred the proceeds to a fund at the Community Foundation;
the client would owe capital gains tax on the sale. Especially in cases where
the client has held the stock a long time and it’s gone up significantly in
value, the capital gains hit can be big.
QCDs from IRAs
As always, keep in mind that the
Qualified Charitable Distribution (“QCD”) is a very smart way to support
charitable causes. If your client is over the age of 70 ½, the client can
direct up to $105,000 (in 2024) from an IRA to certain charities, including a field-of-interest, designated, unrestricted, or scholarship fund at the Community
Foundation. If your client is subject to the
rules for Required Minimum Distributions (RMDs), QCDs count toward those RMDs.
That means your client avoids income tax on the funds distributed to charity.
Our team can work with you and your client to go over the rules for QCDs and
evaluate whether the QCD is a good fit.
Real estate
Your client’s fund at the Community
Foundation can receive a tax-deductible gift of real estate, such as farmland
or commercial property, in a variety of ways. An outright gift is always an
option; lifetime gifts of real estate held by the client for more than one year
are deductible for income tax purposes at 100% of the fair market value of the
property on the date of the gift, which also avoids capital gains tax and
reduces the value of your client’s taxable estate. Other ways to give real
estate include a bargain sale or a transfer to a charitable remainder trust
which produces lifetime income for the client and the client’s family.
Life insurance
Don’t overlook life insurance as an
effective charitable giving tool, whether by naming a client’s fund at the Community
Foundation as the beneficiary or, in the case of whole life policies, naming
the fund as beneficiary and transferring the policy itself. If your
client transfers a policy, the client may be able to make annual,
tax-deductible contributions to the Community Foundation to cover the
premiums.
Other “alternative” assets
The Community Foundation is happy to
work with you and your clients to explore options for giving other non-cash
assets to funds at the Community Foundation, including:
Oil and gas interests
Negotiable instruments
We look forward to working with you to explore all the options!
In the fertile soil of the Arkansas Delta, you’ll find a special group of leaders, volunteers and donors committed to making Craighead County the best it can be.
Craighead County Community Foundation was founded in 2001. Since its inception, the group has made $3.1 million in grants and scholarships. Their Giving Tree program continues to grow and accepts applications once a year. Recently, the affiliate received a large estate gift that will allow them to make nearly double the amount of Giving Tree grants in future years.
“There is a lot of need here. In response to that need, we are listening to the nonprofits closely and working hard to meet them where they are and be more flexible in how we provide funding,” said Jonathan Jacobs, current chair of the local board.
“I like our approach to grantmaking,” he said. “Our goal is to maximize our grant dollars to make the most impact possible. Knowing the nonprofits better enables us to do this.”
Jacobs and his wife started a fund at the Community Foundation in 2021 and give to a variety of causes. “I love having my whole family involved in philanthropy. We named our endowment together and I want my children to see the needs here locally and understand how people experience life different from us,” he said. “My dad taught me about service to others. One of my earliest memories was watching him fry fish [at an annual fundraiser] at Camp Aldersgate in Little Rock. I’m grateful he taught me how to give back. One way I do that is by serving on this board.”
“Old ideas of philanthropy are gone,” said Gina Gomez, former board member. “The needs are too great so we must adapt and change. Literacy rates are dismal. Poverty is increasing. We must rise up to address these needs and more. By recruiting young professionals to our board, encouraging youth to be involved and pursuing as much information as we can, this community foundation is bringing new life to this county and its residents.”
Melissa Ayers is the executive director for the affiliate. “Next year, we plan to grant more than $108,000 from our Giving Tree and Stop Hunger endowments and want to keep doing more. We prioritize different areas of focus for our grantmaking based on data and community needs,” said Ayers. “But in addition to grantmaking, we are trying to teach this community about what philanthropy really is. It’s more than monetary donations and more than something only wealthy people can do — it is anything you can do that will help others.”
Melissa Ayers
“This affiliate has always had strong leadership, and we’ve always been a little ahead of the curve,” said Gomez. “But we want to keep building on that by being a better listener for underserved communities, attracting new donors and reaching out to new nonprofits. We want people in this area to know that this Foundation is for everyone.”
Craighead County Community Foundation is one of 29 local offices. To learn more about our affiliate system, visit arcf.org/affilates.
If you’re a business owner, odds are
you already give back to your community. Like many charitably-minded people,
your business likely sponsors events, makes in-kind donations, and donates cash
to favorite organizations.
Many Arkansas business owners work with
the Community Foundation to give back to the community where they built their
businesses and developed lasting relationships with employees and customers.
The Community Foundation offers a
variety of tools to help you build and grow your corporate philanthropy
program, including:
Corporate Advised
Fund. Establishing a corporate donor advised
fund helps you organize your company’s giving in a convenient, easy to use tool
at the Community Foundation.
Matching
gifts. The Community Foundation can help
guide your team in creating and administering a program that matches employees’
volunteer time and dollars.
Grant making
administration and strategy.
You and your colleagues likely receive dozens of requests each month from nonprofit
organizations requesting sponsorships and monetary donations. Our team at the Community
Foundation can help you create and implement a strategy for evaluating and responding
to those requests to align with your company’s goals for supporting and
prioritizing causes.
The Community Foundation is glad to
help you deepen your company’s impact and connection to your community,
customers, and employees by creating a philanthropy plan that supports causes
that align with the wide range of your objectives. Reach out to one of our philanthropic advisors today!
As you contemplate your legacy and
adjust your estate plan over the years, it’s natural to focus on your children
and family as the primary beneficiaries in your will and trust. However, if
you’re like many other charitably-minded individuals, you might find that your
perspectives about what exactly it means to leave a legacy are expanding beyond
your next of kin.
If your community is on your mind and
in your heart, and you’re interested in ways you improve the quality of life
for your neighbors, our team at the Community Foundation would be honored to discuss the
ways we can help. Here are three options for funds you
can establish with the Community Foundation to benefit your community in your
overall philanthropy and estate plan:
Unrestricted fund
Major advantages of the Community Foundation
include its perpetual structure, community-based governance, and ability to
respond to emerging needs. An unrestricted fund allows you and your family to
provide support that evolves over time as priorities in the region shift. The Community
Foundation’s mission is to thoroughly understand the community and improve
lives within it. TheFoundation’s board and professional staff conduct ongoing,
extensive research about the needs of the community and the nonprofit programs
that are addressing those needs. Establishing an unrestricted fund means you
are investing in the Community Foundation to support programs that are
addressing the community’s most pressing needs now, and in the future.
Field-of-interest fund
A field of interest fund is an ideal
way to target your giving to specific areas of community need (such as
education, health, environment, or the arts). Your field of interest fund at
the Community Foundation establishes parameters for grant making according to
your wishes. The Foundation’s staff follows these parameters and uses its
research and expertise to make grants that align with your intentions. Your
fund can continue beyond your lifetime, for multiple generations, providing ongoing
support to your area(s) of interest.
Designated fund
A designated fund at the Community Foundation
can help you secure your favorite organization’s financial future so that its
mission continues, uninterrupted, even in the face of challenges. You can set
up multiple designated funds if you’d like to support more than one
organization. You can even set up a designated fund to support a governmental
unit, such as the parks department. A designated fund allows you to decide on
the timing of the distributions from the fund, such as during the organization’s capital campaign or to support a
specific program or initiative. You can serve as an advisor to the fund to
recommend the timing and amount of grants to the supported organization, or you
can appoint the board of directors of the Community Foundation to carry out
this function according to your wishes.
And here’s a bonus!If you plan to give to an unrestricted fund, designated fund, or field-of-interest fund at the community foundation during your lifetime, and you’re over the age of 70 1/2, you can direct up to $105,000 each year from your IRA to the fund. This is called a “Qualified Charitable Distribution,” or “QCD.” Not only do QCD transfers count toward satisfying your Required Minimum Distributions if you’ve reached that age threshold, but you also avoid the income tax on those funds. Furthermore, the assets distributed through a QCD are no longer part of your estate upon your death, so you can avoid estate taxes, too.
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