On our way toward establishing $2 million endowment
Our initial endowment establishment, like most, is to create future financial sustainability to support our mission of preserving and creating Green Space for the Islamorada Community. The endowment’s restricted funds will be utilized to support future capital projects determined by our Board of Directors.
Endowment funds will not support day to day expenses of current or future properties or staffed personnel.
Mail – The Islamorada Foundation | c/o Endowment Gift | P.O. Box 1315 Islamorada, FL 33036
Please designate your gift as an endowment gift (vs general gift)
Benefits
Have questions about this, or any endowment? Here are some highlight benefits to both you (donor) and The Islamorada Foundation (501(c)(3) organization)
Endowment contributions—both those that create new funds and those that add to existing funds—provide numerous benefits to donors.
Benefits to you – The Donor:
▪ Exemplifies the donor’s priorities and values. An endowment gift can perpetuate the donor’s values in the wake of change; it can provide assurance that programs that are important to the donor will survive. By creating or adding to a permanent endowment for a designated purpose, the donor seeks to enable and obligate the organization to carry out his or her expressed wishes, so long as it is practical and possible to do so. A restricted endowment can ensure organizational support for the donor’s priorities.
▪ Creates an opportunity for Legacy. Because an endowment gift will be invested permanently, it can serve as a permanent tribute to the donor and extend the donor’s values for future generations. It can offer the donor a sense of immortality, a way to define the donor’s place in support of an important cause.
▪ Makes significant investment in the future. Many donors make larger endowment gifts, often through planned giving, than they dreamed were possible. Endowment gifts are sometimes the donor’s last (and largest) gift to the organizations they value most. Donors can receive great satisfaction from making a significant contribution from assets accumulated over their lifetimes. In the case of deferred planned gifts, the gifts may be the donors’ final acts of contributing to the organization or the work that they find most valuable.
▪ Endow annual giving. An endowment gift gives donors the option to perpetuate their annual gifts. For example, the $100 per year donor might make a $2,000 endowment gift in order to continue annual gifts of $100 to the organization in the future. This concept is often appealing to the consistent older donor. For example, an 80-year-old wife who had given $1,200 to her local chapter of the American Cancer Society each year since her husband was diagnosed 15 years earlier found comfort in creating a $25,000 deferred endowment, which, at 5%, generated the same $1,200 annually for the Society following her death.
▪ Allows incremental funding. Some donors do not want to give away their assets during their lifetimes, yet they want to see the benefits of the gift immediately. They establish endowment gifts through bequests or other gift means that take place after their lifetimes. Then they make gifts annually that represent the amount that would have been distributed from the endowment if their gift had already been received. In this way, their annual gifts can provide the support currently that their planned gift will provide eventually.
▪ Provides lifetime income. Some kinds of endowment gifts—split interest gifts—pay income to the donor for life, with the remainder going to the charity’s endowment after the donor’s death. These kinds of gifts can create stable income to the donor during retirement years or can help the donor meet family obligations.
▪ Permits additions at a later time. An endowment fund can be added to later. The donor, or the donor’s friends and family, can add to a named fund from time to time by simply identifying the fund as the object of the gift. It makes a handy avenue for people, especially family members, who wish to make meaningful gifts to people who already have enough “stuff.”
Benefits to The Islamorada Foundation:
There are advantages of a significant and growing endowment to the board of directors/officers, of the non-profit. Here is a list of some of the benefits:
▪ Creates an ongoing source of income. Because a permanent endowment is an invested pool of money that provides a reliable source of income in perpetuity, the organization can count on annual interest for its charitable work. Funds may be designated for endowment by the donor or by the board of directors. With appropriate investment and spending policies, the endowment’s purchasing power will be preserved. The endowment also grows over time with additional gifts from a variety of donors.
▪ Enhances stability and prestige. A well-managed endowment spells out a message of planned long-term stability, fiscal responsibility, and financial viability. It enhances the organization’s credibility with a show of fiscal diligence.
▪ Relieves pressure on the annual fund. Annual funding needs tend to rise right along with the cost of providing additional services and operating the organization, but the ability of the annual fund to meet increasing demand is not limitless. A growing endowment can provide annual support for our organization’s Capital project needs.
▪ Allows new Capital project expansion. Capital project expansion, or needs, can be funded with distributions generated from endowment funds.
▪ Provides independence. Endowment contributions designated for specific purposes can provide a measure of independence from economic conditions.
▪ Offers flexibility for Foundation management. Endowments offer options to meet new challenges by providing greater financial flexibility and self-sustaining income streams. Endowments can augment uncertain or inconsistent income sources, broaden the non-profit’s overall revenue mix, improve the income statement, and provide leverage for bond-rating capacity and loans for new facilities.
▪ Builds pipeline of future gifts. A growing endowment builds a pipeline of gifts that will mature on a greater basis in the future, because many endowment gifts are designed to be used at a future date, often upon the death of the donor. An organization that attracts deferred gifts enhances its future financial security and positions itself to enjoy increasingly larger gifts in the future.
▪ Encourages outright gifts. Outright gifts as well as other kinds of planned gifts are encouraged by building an endowment. Donors who have decided to make an endowment gift to the organization are likely to make gifts to the organization’s annual and capital campaigns as well. After all, they have already made a commitment to the organization’s future.