Guidelines for Giving

The Community Foundation can assist civic minded person make special contributions to the community.

The Foundation accepts small unrestricted gifts to generally support charitable activities and to support the Foundation's operation. Larger gifts are often made for a particular purpose, such as to provide permanent support for a given project or to establish a legacy in memory of a loved one. The Foundation may be named as beneficiary on a retirement plan or IRA or insurance policy or in a will or a trust. There are many ways to give.

The real advantage of the community foundation is to manage permanent gifts, often called endowments, for which the principal is held in perpetuity and the income from it is distributed annually to support one or more designated purpose. Such accounts are therefore sometimes called "donor advised funds". More information is available on a separate page.

This donor advised approach also allows gifts to be made in a year of high tax liability, yet permit donor advice on where to make gifts in future years.

Distribution checks from the community foundation can be written only to 501(c)3 tax exempt entities or local government accounts such as a scholarship fund at a school. This restriction ensures that requirements for tax deductions for the donors will be met. The foundations board may also limit distributions to charities that have reasonable, normal overhead expenses. Other than these restrictions, the Foundation does not limit or favor particular charities. It is an independent, neutral, central repository for charitable gifts.

Finally, a charity may decide that it does not want to do endowment accounting itself and may establish its own account within the foundation and thereafter request its permanent fund donors to make checks or bequests to that account.

The Bozeman Area Community Foundation has a goal of low overhead. It's current target is to keep annual overhead expense to 1% of assets or less.