20 Sep Meet Bradley Myers
Hi. It’s ME, Bradley...
Author: Shelly Jones
19 Sep Mind Your Own Busyness
You’ve gotta love Facebook’s ‘Memories’ feature. Each morning, the social media app reminds you of things that happened on this very day for as long as you’ve been a member of the Facebook family—all kinds of silly memories you forgot that you forgot. Most of the time they are things that bring a good memory back to life. Often, they are reminders that make you laugh out loud. One of my funniest memories was when I ran into a good friend of mine from high school…literally! I’m not kidding! Apparently, we both drove the same Indiana-back-roads-to-save-five-minutes route to work. Unbeknownst to me, she was in the car directly in front of me at an awkward intersection. I thought she drove forward to make the right-hand turn. Apparently, she drove forward to get a better view of the traffic coming in from the south. So, my premature acceleration led me directly into her back bumper! CrAsH. Luckily, I was only driving about 2 miles per hour, so there was no damage to either car and no one was hurt. But it was pretty hilarious to experience a fender-bender, exit the car to survey the damage, and discover that you literally just...
15 Aug CoFo Provides Free Tool for “Make-a-Will Month”
Grant County, August 2023—Making a will creates peace of mind for you and the people and organizations you love. That’s why the Community Foundation of Grant County has made the processes of completing your will easy with a new tool called FreeWill. The Community Foundation has partnered with FreeWill, a secure, online will-maker, which will allow you to fill out your free, legally-valid will forms in less than 20 minutes. Just answer a few questions about yourself, your assets, and your wishes, and the will-making tool provides forms and instructions for how to make your will valid in the state where you live. There are several reasons why this is vitally important to do now. - Everyone needs a will, whether you’re 18 or 80. And there’s no better moment than now to begin planning for the future. - Your will gives you peace of mind knowing that your loved ones are taken care of your assets are distributed accurately, and that your charitable gift reflects your personal values. Selecting the right estate planning vehicle can allow you to reduce your estate taxes and income taxes while avoiding the stress and cost of interstate probate proceedings and, if you choose, creating a larger...
09 Aug Three Local Crowdfunding Campaigns Officially Launch
The Community Foundation of Grant County is excited to announce three crowdfunding campaign goals with East Central Indiana Robotics - PhyXTGears Team 1720 (PhyXTGears), Habitat for Humanity of Grant County (Habitat), and Indiana Motorcycle Preservation Society (IMPS). PhyXTGears launched their crowdfunding campaign on July 15th and aims to crowdfund $20,000 to prepare high school students for Indiana’s technology workforce through hands-on STEM training. PhyXTGears’ campaign will end September 13th at midnight. Learn more and donate online to support this campaign by visiting www.GiveToGrant.org/RoboticsCF. Habitat launched their crowdfunding campaign on July 21st and aims to crowdfund $20,000 to provide a new 3-bedroom home for the Williams family. Habitat's campaign will end September 19th at midnight. Learn more and donate online to support this campaign by visiting www.GiveToGrant.org/HabitatCF. IMPS launched their crowdfunding campaign on July 17th and aims to crowdfund $10,000 to showcase Indiana's motorcycle history and preserve Marion's “hog” heritage with a permanent exhibit. IMPS’ campaign will end September 15th at midnight. Learn more and donate online to support this campaign by visiting www.GiveToGrant.org/IMPSCF. The Foundation will track all charitable contributions made by donors for each campaign. If the organizations meet their fundraising goals, the Foundation will award them a dollar-for-dollar matching grant to complete...
08 Aug 70% of Americans never do this
As an education major for my undergrad degree, I had to take a music class. Seemed pretty harmless. I love music. My Spotify playlist right now has all the summer vibes and it’s making me so happy! Little did I know that this specific music professor would require every student to sing on-key in order to get an ‘A’ in the class. Crud, this just got a whole lot harder. It’s likely no surprise to you that I’m a Type A personality—as in, I needed to get all A’s. That was a hyper-vigilant obsession I developed back during my school years that I’ve spent every minute since trying to overcome. I’ve heard the saying “C’s get degrees” plenty of times; after all, what do you call a doctor who got all C’s in school? Yeah, DOCTOR! Nonetheless, I was on a mission to learn how to sing on-key. By week 2 of the class, it wasn’t looking good. So, I approached the prof and asked him if he could ‘tutor’ me. He agreed and said that with a bit of his help, I’d be singing on-key by the end of the quarter. From then on, every Tuesday and Thursday after class, I’d...
18 Jul Community Foundation Awards $100,556 in Grants to Nine Local Organizations Serving Grant County
The Community Foundation of Grant County is excited to announce the recipients of the Give to Grant Cycle as a part of the Give to Grant Collaborative. A total of $50,556 was awarded in grants to six local organizations along with $50,000 to three Crowdfunding Campaigns for programs and projects supporting positive impact for the betterment of Grant County. The Foundation is home to a variety of 400+ charitable funds established by generous donors with a passion for supporting worthwhile charitable causes. The Give to Grant Collaborative uniquely consists of endowment funds that were established to provide support for general charitable purposes, identified as the most pressing needs and opportunities in the community. These grants were awarded at the discretion of the Foundation’s Board of Directors. “The Community Foundation is proud to assist these quality organizations in making a positive impact in our community.” said Meagan Mathias, Community Leadership Director of the Foundation “The Give to Grant Collaborative streamlines the process of charitable giving and amplifies philanthropic impact by matching dollars from many contributing funds to create a significant outcome for the community. Annually, the Foundation awards grants ranging from $1-3 Million to nonprofits, community organizations, and aspiring college students residing in...
20 Jun Stepping up endowment fundraising in a challenging economy
It can be difficult to engage fundraising activities when the economy is strong, let alone when the economy is shaky. But a challenging financial environment is no time to ease up on managing your fundraising efforts with help from your Board of Directors. As we wrap up FY 2023, consider getting started right away on steps to increase board engagement with fundraising and especially endowment fundraising. Set the tone early Make sure that your first board meeting of the new year includes a segment on fundraising and the status of your endowment, even if your endowment has taken a hit in the rollercoaster stock market. Most endowment funds are down, and it’s much better to be up front with the information than to sweep it under the rug. Everyone is in the same boat, and board members will be expecting this information. Inspire action After the fiscal-year-end 2023 reports are out of the way, jump into a thoughtful and confident discussion about 2023-2024 fundraising. Share with board members that your team is prepared and geared up for an enthusiastic fundraising initiative, starting right now. While other nonprofits may be hunkered down, worried, and reluctant to ask donors for money, you’re not. You know that...
14 Jun What is a Donor-Advised Fund? And how does it work?
A DAF is a centralized vehicle for charitable giving that makes it easy for donors to dedicate funds to support their favorite nonprofit organization(s). It also provides an operationally convenient and tax-efficient method for donors to manage their charitable giving. With a DAF, charitably inclined individuals, families, and businesses make an irrevocable gift to a public charity that sponsors a donor-advised fund program (like the Community Foundation), and they may even take an immediate tax deduction. Donors can then recommend grants over time to IRS-qualified 501(c)(3) public charities. DAFs also allow donors to approach their charitable giving thoughtfully by involving other family members or colleagues in their philanthropic decisions. Many of our donors give donations of long-term appreciated securities, or (if they're over 70.5) make a Qualified Charitable Distribution from their IRAs, and other assets to fund their DAFs all of which are more "tax-smart" than giving cash. And donors experience tax-free growth on their donation, which could result in more money to support your favorite charitable cause(s)! Here's how it works: A donor makes an irrevocable, tax-deductible donation to a Named, Donor-Advised Fund at the Community Foundation. The donation grows through investment and the investment growth is tax-free. The donor recommends...
14 Jun Just 3 Things
You see it every day. Two kinds of people are roaming our planet. One type flies by the seat of their pants. They wake up and don’t know exactly what the day will bring. They just see who calls or emails or texts to guide their energy. They have no plans. Life happens to them and they seem just fine with that reactive anti-system. Then you have your planners. They are the ones who have checklists. And the first item on the checklist is ‘make a checklist’. Or they happen to complete some task that wasn’t on the checklist, so they hurry up and write it down so they can gleefully tick it off as complete. They love a good system and will create one, if needed. And while being hardcore on either side of the planning continuum might not be a healthy best practice, the CoFo team definitely lands on the side of planning our work so we can work our plan. That’s exactly how we completed our last strategic plan one year earlier than projected. Literally, we directed our minutes and our money relentlessly toward achieving our goals. So, then we spent three months working with Wendy Puffer and her awesome...
03 May 18 and Counting
Eighteen years ago, Jessica Simpson was married to Nick Lachey and asked the world, publicly, if she was eating chicken or tuna because the outside of the tuna can said, ‘Chicken of the Sea’. That’s when someone in my family might say, ‘You’re so pretty” because it’s a good thing she at least had that going for her, if nothing else. I love to look back at what happened in the years where big things took place in my life. In fact, my go-to wedding and baby shower gift is one copy of Time Magazine’s Annual ‘The Year in Review’ and one copy of People Magazine’s ‘Yearbook’ for the year their special occasion took place. I typically order these in January and send them to my friends who were so busy planning for their momentous event the prior year that they might have missed some really big news. It’s always a hit, unexpected in January long after their occasion took place, and a definite keeper for the time capsule. The year 2005 also brought the premiere of How I Met Your Mother, the oh-so-in-love Tom Cruise jumping up and down on Oprah’s couch declaring his undying love of Katie Holmes (Spoiler Alert: ...