Dear friends of SWCF,
Many are familiar with the Ecclesiastes verse – or if you prefer, the song by The Byrds – about there being a season for everything. At SWCF, we know that people also go through seasons of giving. And that doesn’t just mean the year-end rush where everyone tries to get their tax-deductible donations in before the end of the year! Just as our personal interests wax and wane throughout life, so too do our philanthropic priorities.
Major life events can impact our giving. A loved one developing cancer or a child with special needs is rightly going to shift our focus to those issues and may also shift our giving. The same is true for increased knowledge about certain topics: reading an article about food deserts might compel someone to donate to a food pantry, or hearing a friend talk about their depression might motivate someone to donate to a mental-health organization.
America’s response to the events of 2020 is reflective of these shifting priorities. Whether it was public health and infectious disease, racial dynamics, or social isolation, we were all bracing for impact on a variety of fronts. Our philanthropy reflected this heightened awareness: Giving USA reported that in 2020, all nine categories of giving that it tracks received donations for both Covid-19 relief and racial justice.
Of course, that year was an outlier in so many ways, and issues that were top of mind in 2020 may not be our priorities today. That doesn’t mean we’re fickle in our interests or in our charity; rather, we’re adapting to new conditions as they arise, and new information as we learn it. Sometimes our giving reflects the broader needs of society, and sometimes it feels right to support the causes closest to us.
My husband and I recently traveled on a multi-stop series of flights with two young kids. As we settled in on our flight from Charlotte to Dallas, I listened to the flight attendant go through the standard on-board safety guidelines, reminding us that in case of sudden loss of cabin pressure, to put our own mask on first. Being preoccupied with philanthropy, as I tend to be, this made me think of giving within our own immediate communities, as opposed to a global cause.
Neither type of giving is wrong, and both are important! But their relative importance to each of us tends to change throughout different seasons of life. Fortunately, SWCF can help with changes in your charitable-giving flight path. Those of you who hold donor-advised funds (DAFs) know how agile giving through them can be. With a few clicks on the SWCF portal, you can make a donation to an organization that you just saw on the news or heard someone talk about.
What might come as more of a surprise is that other types of gifts can be flexible too. For example, if you’ve set up an endowment at SWCF that will be funded through your estate plans, and you decide next year to add another organization to the list of organizations the endowment will benefit, we can easily make that change. Similarly, scholarship funds that have not yet begun granting scholarships can be changed to support a different type of student, area of study, or school. Life takes us in many directions – and some of them are as unpredictable as making flight connections when there are tropical storms in the area. (I may have been a little scarred by my recent travel experience.)
As important as our individual fundholders are to us, we also want to ensure that the nonprofit organizations they support are thriving now and in the future. Did you know that DJCF/SWCF also provides endowment advice and execution support for more than 60 other nonprofit organizations? These services are provided at a 50% discount to our standard community development fee schedule, ensuring that any nonprofit, whether they have $5,000 or $50,000,000, can access institutional, quality endowment investment advice and execution. This is one of the many ways your individual DAF, scholarship, or endowment is benefiting the entire nonprofit community. And that’s not the only way we support our partners in the nonprofit community:
1) SWCF serves as the complex gift acceptance arm for the entire philanthropic community. We have experience with stock gifts, closely held business interests, real estate, mineral rights, digital assets, and more. Our gift acceptance policy has just been updated to reflect the modern types of assets that savvy donors are choosing to give to charity.
2) We offer short-term financing solutions for other nonprofit agencies – where there’s a mismatch in donor pledges or capital campaigns and project time horizons, SWCF is honored to serve as a financial backstop when traditional bank financing isn’t an option.
3) Our expertise in legacy society building is being implemented by organizations big and small – we published a thought piece in July about how to start a legacy-giving society, key considerations for managing the program, and how SWCF can be a helpful partner in those initiatives.
These services wouldn’t be possible without the generous support of our individual fundholders. We know there are many options when it comes to choosing a partner in philanthropy and take the role very seriously. Next month, I’ll celebrate my 2nd anniversary as President and CEO of the Southwest Community Foundation. I’ll reflect more on our accomplishments together in my next newsletter, but even though it can feel like we’re building the plane as we fly, we remain focused on our flight path – growing philanthropy. Thanks for sticking with me on this journey – it’s an honor to be your captain!
PROGRAMS & EVENTS
DJCF/SWCF Open House
8/22 | 11:00 am – 2:00 pm
We are delighted to invite you to join us for an Open House at DJCF/SWCF’s new Byrna & Joe Funk Family Philanthropy Center offices! Please drop by to explore our new space, visit with our dedicated team members, and learn more about exciting opportunities to engage with DJCF/SWCF in the year ahead.
2024 Meyer L. Bodoff Memorial Award Reception
9/3 | 5:30 – 7:00 pm
DJCF/SWCF invites our fundholders and friends to join us in honoring this year’s recipient of the Meyer L. Bodoff Memorial Award of the DJCF, Larry Schoenbrun. We’ll also hear remarks from Russell James on year-end charitable giving. Dr. James will be the speaker at the DJCF/SWCF Professional Advisors Seminar the following day.
2024 Professional Advisors Seminar
9/4 | 7:30 am – 10:30 am
Now in its 29th year, the DJCF/SWCF Professional Advisors Seminar is one of the cornerstone annual events for the Dallas professional advisor community. The seminar offers the opportunity to learn from a nationally recognized expert, earn continuing education credits, and network with professional advisors across several fields. The content of the seminar is designed to appeal to accountants, estate attorneys, financial planners, insurance agents, wealth advisors, and other related professions. This year, the seminar will take place on September 4 at the Westin Galleria and will feature Russell James III, Ph.D., J.D., CFP®, a renowned expert in financial planning and charitable giving. Professor James is the CH Foundation Chair of Personal Financial Planning and the Charitable Giving Program Director at Texas Tech University.
To register or learn more, Click Here!
Investment Reports & Fund Statements
The Foundation’s investment portfolios managed by Graystone Consulting, under the guidance of the Foundation Investment Committee. This relationship has allowed us to offer seven investment models for our constituents to choose from. Graystone provides monthly investment return information on the models as a whole and fact cards for the individual models and the sub-funds that make up each model.
SWCF’s July investment performance reports are posted on the website. These reports can be found on the Investment Reports page under ‘Tools + Resources’ tab on our menu toggle, found here: Investment Reports – Southwest Community Foundation (www.southwestcf.org)
July fund holder statements can be found in your My SWCF portal.
Thank you for entrusting us with your generosity and for being an integral part of our foundation. Your support fuels our work and inspires us every day.
