Iowa Council of Foundations

Jake Byers, Director of Marketing and Communications

Community Foundation of Northeast Iowa

The overall impact of community foundation grants across our state is impressive, and of course we all share our large impact numbers with our audiences. This shows our scope and is a big picture view of how together with our stakeholder partners we make a difference in the counties and communities they love. What sometimes gets lost in these big numbers is the smaller and often more impactful story of what a grant truly means to the organization receiving it. Providing the stories of grant recipients and how a grant helped them make a specific difference in their county or community gives stakeholders, including donors, advisors, and other nonprofits, something they can relate to in an emotional and tangible way. The Community Foundation of Northeast Iowa shares these stories across our communication platforms to put a human face on the numbers.

Making grants living, breathing things through storytelling is an important part of CFNEIA’s communications efforts. The stories are gathered through grant reports, collaborations with other staff and affiliate community foundation volunteers, one-on-one sit downs with grantees, or just getting a simple impact quote through email (make sure you have a photo). This content creation in some instances can be time consuming, but by repurposing our content across channels we get more mileage out of these stories. Our highest engagement on Facebook comes when a story, that often was created for print and then added to the website, is posted for an even broader audience. We believe in the impact of storytelling and continue to invest in plans to generate more content shared through new mediums such as video and other social media platforms.

Ultimately, these stories show, on a personal level, how CFNEIA uses the resources entrusted to us to enrich our communities. We believe by creating an emotional connection to grant projects, donors feel good about their generosity and people who may not have understood the community foundation philosophy are inspired to share their resources.

Kari McCann Boutell, President

Iowa Council of Foundations

As the dust settles on the tax reform bill, I wanted to point out key provisions that will likely impact community foundations.

Briefly, doubling the standard deduction and eliminating or reducing other credits and deductions is projected to result in 95% of current itemizers no longer using that schedule. What does this mean for your organization and those you support? We don’t know for sure but we do know that tax policy plays a major incentive for charitable giving and are afraid of how those donations might fall. Additionally, the exemption from the federal estate tax was doubled to about $22 million for couples.

Three positive items to note: the Johnson Amendment stands, prohibiting political activity by nonprofits; no changes were made to donor advised funds; and donors can receive a tax deduction for cash gifts of up to 60% of their adjusted gross income, up from the current 50% limit.

As we look to next year, we’ll be heading to Washington for Foundations on the Hill, where we will talk about a number of ways to mitigate the damage to charitable giving that we anticipate:

• Allow IRA assets to be given to donor advised funds;
• Decrease the IRA charitable rollover age to 59 ½; and
• Create an above the line, universal deduction for charitable gifts.

It will be a critical year, please consider joining your philanthropy colleagues from across the country on March 12 – 14 for Foundations on the Hill. You can find more information here.

Kari McCann Boutell, Iowa Council of Foundations President

November 12-18, 2018 was a week-long celebration of the national Community Foundations Week. Each year the Iowa Council of Foundations prepares and distributes a press release across Iowa to recognize the important work happening throughout our community foundations network and to celebrate the success of the Endow Iowa Tax Credit and County Endowment Fund program. This year was no different.

In addition to this effort, I also penned several op-eds in partnership with local community foundations. You can view those that were published by following these links:

• Des Moines Register
• Dubuque Telegraph Herald
• Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier

As a result of this outreach, the next week I was contacted by Iowa Public Radio to do an interview on Giving Tuesday about ways community foundations can be partners in giving. We were also able to help two Iowa community foundations connect with the interview and share stories about their work. You can listen to the interviews here.

All of this demonstrates the important work of advocacy, communications and outreach. The more you are out telling your story, the more people are becoming aware of the roles you play in your communities and how you are helping to strengthen the cultural fabric of Iowa. Don’t forget there are several samples and tools in the Community Foundations members only section on the Iowa Council of Foundations website to help get you started. If there is any way our office can be helpful to you in this work, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Angela Determan, Cerro Gordo County Community Foundation Advisory Committee Member

While working to become a Blue Zones Community, the governing committee of the Cerro Gordo County Community Foundation identified that we had many great organizations in Mason City, but we didn’t always collaborate as well as we could to achieve greater outcomes. Over the course of the last five years, we have grown in our partnerships including identifying the need for a volunteer center in our area. In April of 2015 the Mason City Volunteer Center (MCVC) was born and collaboration would be integral to its success.

The Mason City Volunteer Center supports the work of non-profit members with volunteer placements and promoting volunteer opportunities by emphasizing skill- and purpose-based matches and assisting cultivation of volunteers for non-profits and in our community. A primary function is to not only assist with volunteer cultivation and placement, but to provide education for non-profits to strengthen their organization allowing them more time fulfilling their mission.

The Cerro Gordo County Community Foundation receives nearly 70 grant requests annually. It was important to our governing committee that non-profits are doing everything to ensure their organizations are operationally and fiscally sound. It made sense that both the Mason City Volunteer Center and Cerro Gordo County Community Foundation desired the same success for non-profits in our area. The MCVC reached out to the Community Foundation to discuss opportunities to partner through the sponsorship of a radio program promoting volunteer opportunities and with high quality training and education events.

As we promoted The Iowa Nonprofit Awards nomination information to our members through our monthly newsletter, we realized that we really had something to showcase ourselves in an awards application. The MCVC nominated the Cerro Gordo County Community Foundation and appreciate their vision and spirit of collaboration. We couldn’t be more proud to be a role model for others to recognize the benefits of collaboration.

 

October 2, 2017

Mike Nuss, Committee Member, Ackley Community Foundation

The Ackley Community Foundation used a 2016 Connect Mini-Grant (from the drawing) to develop and establish a donor envelope campaign by expanding on a memorial envelope developed by the Floyd County Community Foundation.  The intent of the project was to:

• create visibility for the Foundation;
• educate the public on the purpose  of the Foundation;
• allow for donations of any size to create fund growth; and
• allow donors to give tp the Foundation at their convenience.

Displays and envelopes were placed throughout the community at seven churches, two banks and a funeral home. Newspaper publicity explaining the program provided additional support. Total costs for printing and the display units were $422.00. Displays were placed this past March and April.

As of the end of August, sixteen gifts had been received totaling $13,395.00.  *It should be noted that ten of the gifts were from Foundation Board members utilizing the envelopes, and a local church that had received an estate gift used the program to make a $10,000 donation to “pay it forward” to the Ackley Community.

The Ackley Community Foundation is very appreciative of the Iowa Council of Foundations grant which made the campaign possible.