Foundation Blog

At CFA, our mission is to empower people to make a lasting charitable impact on our community. We want to give people a long-term way to contribute to the causes they're passionate about.

This is what endowed philanthropy allows us to do. We manage endowment funds for donors, and, because of our strategic investments, these funds have the potential to grow over time and grant out more money than the amount of the original gift. That's what we mean by lasting impact.

Here's the basic idea of how endowment funds work:

1. Make a gift to establish your fund. We'll walk you through a variety of fund types so you can choose which option is best to serve the charitable causes you care about. Learn more about fund types here.
2. We invest the gift so the fund can grow. CFA works with an investment consultant and an expert investment committee to make careful and strategic decisions to help your fund grow and maximize impact.
3. Grants are made each year from your fund's earnings. Depending on which fund type you choose, your fund can make grants to serve a range of nonprofit causes, nonprofits serving a particular field of interest, a specific nonprofit organization, or a college scholarship. Learn more about different types of grants here.
4. The investment and grantmaking process repeats, allowing you to make a lasting impact!

As an example of the power of endowment, the image below shows the investment and grantmaking performance of an actual CFA fund.

Let us know how we can help make your charitable goals a reality. Contact us any time, even just to have a conversation.