The York Region Community Foundation achieves its mission by:
Building endowment funds from the gifts of donors
Providing flexible, comprehensive donor services by offering a wide range of giving opportunities and helping donors achieve their particular charitable goals;
Making grants from the income generated by established endowments to qualified organizations; and
Acting as a catalyst with partners to provide a forum to consider community priorities and action around emerging and existing community needs.
York Region Community Foundation is well poised to connect donors with the community issues and organizations that matter most to them. A donation to the YRCF opens the doors to many charitable opportunities:
YRCF offers the means to support your favourite causes or charities in perpetuity. In partnership with BMO Harris Private Banking, we have the expertise and investment power to effectively manage a growing endowment;
We have the capacity to accept gifts in any form, including cash, real estate, securities, shares in publicly traded companies and insurance
You may choose to support your hometown broadly or to designate your gift in support of one or more favourite causes or charities within a specific community, communities or throughout the region;
With our finger on the pulse of the local charitable community, we offer unique insights and experiences that can help you choose the best -possible beneficiary of your support and even change it from year to year; an
Accountability is a top priority. We ask the charities you support to submit an annual report detailing the results and benefits of your donation, and we are available to provide you with an analysis of the returns.
A gift to the York Region Community Foundation helps our communities flourish and everyone benefits.
Donors will:
1. Gain the flexibility and expertise to make a tangible difference;
2. Through the charities they support, help people live better and take better care of their communities;
3. Establish a gift in perpetuity to support multiple or changing community priorities with a single investment;
4. Have the choice of leveraging their private foundation assets within a larger, pooled fund; and
5. Experience the means to realize our community vision.
Charities will:
1. Connect to new donors and volunteers;
2. Nurture a spirit of giving among non-traditional communities like new Canadians who have yet to participate in philanthropy in an organized way;
3. Have the capacity to plan beyond immediate needs and to manage complex, long-term donations in support of their mission;
4. Gain new opportunities for grant support from the Foundation’s undesignated and general funds;
5. Forge unique partnerships with charitable groups with common goals; and
6. Benefit from greater returns on their investments by pooling their endowment funds with the YRCF.
Our communities will:
1. Experience the widespread benefits of increased philanthropy;
2. Be well poised for sustainable growth;
3. Have the means to address important community priorities in every sector — from health, education and social services, to youth, the arts and environment; and
4. Celebrate our diverse strengths and take critical steps toward overcoming our challenges.
The concept may be new to York Region, but community foundations have decades of experience and a proven track record of helping Canadians make a lasting difference in their communities — now and for future generations. Winnipeg established Canada’s first community foundation in 1921. It now has over 1,700 endorsed funds that in 2006 distributed 416.7 millions to 650 charities in the Winnipeg area. Today, community foundations are one of the country’s fastest growing charitable movements.
In 2006, donors gave $245 million to 155 community foundations across the country, marking a second consecutive year of record-breaking donations and bringing to $2.7 billion the total asset base of the country’s community foundations. That same year, more than $137 million was granted to thousands of community organizations, the beneficiaries of countless individuals, families, businesses and other groups.
