MY VIEW
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By Phil Stambaugh
Community Foundations all over the country are making a major difference in the communities they serve. It is time Nantucket had its own Community Foundation. And now, we do.

As we have gone about establishing a Community

Foundation for Nantucket, we have been asked many questions about it. The most obvious one is: What is a Community Foundation? A Community Foundation offers various giving options to donors, researches the community's greatest needs, and provides a link between the two. Supporters "invest" in the Community Foundation to ensure the quality of life in the community is preserved and enhanced for future generations. By building Permanent Community Endowment funds, from which grants are given to non-profits from interest, dividends and market appreciation, but not principal, a community's needs will be addressed far into the future.

Another common question is whether or not the Community Foundation will compete with existing non-profits for money? There already is lots of competition for donations, as demonstrated by the number of "hold the date" postcards and gala and auction invitations in our mail boxes. However, the Community Foundation exists not for itself, but for the other non-profits. You give through it, not to it. It is a supplement and a complement to those charities. The goal is to grow the giving pie, by making it easier to give and by adding new givers. For example, the Community Foundation can serve as an easy way for newcomers to Nantucket, who are not yet well versed in the local scene, to give through an organization that is attuned to the island's needs, and thereby expanding the giving pie.

Another question regards how people can use the Foundation to help Nantucket now. Obviously many people feel this way, as donor-advised funds (a way to make an immediate impact) are the fastest growing segment of philanthropic giving. The three largest are run by Fidelity (over $5 billion), Vanguard and Schwab (over $2 billion each). By creating a donor-advised fund at our Community Foundation, the donor's money can stay with a local Nantucket organization and grants can be directed by the donors to the Nantucket non-profits of their choice, when they wish.

Another trend underscoring the benefit of having our own Community Foundation is that families, instead of forming their own Family Foundation organization, are now doing so at a Community Foundation. That is because the family gets virtually the same "control-of-the-giving" and tax benefits as by having a Family Foundation but with much lower administrative costs, as well as more privacy.

Finally, fundraising is a major user of our nonprofits' precious human and financial resources. If the Community Foundation can provide some of the funding required to operate a non-profit, it will enable the non-profit to focus on its critical programmatic work. This means more of the resources can be used toward accomplishing the actual mission of the non-profit.

The mission of the Community Foundation for Nantucket is to provide a convenient, trustworthy, professional and dependable conduit for our residents (seasonal and year round), to make a difference in the community. The slogan of Nantucket's Community Foundation, "We make it easy to care for Nantucket",

is a pretty good summation as to why we need it. I

- Phil Stambaugh is treasurer of the Community Foundation for Nantucket.