The Fund for Adams County is our community’s permanent charitable endowment. Each year grants from the Fund support projects and programs that help you, your neighbors, and friends right here in Adams County.

Over the past few years, the Fund for Adams County has supported broadband expansion, recovery house construction, affordable housing options and transportation options to move people from where they live to where they work or go to school. Last year, the Fund was an economic lifeline to over a dozen local nonprofits crushed by the effects of the Covid pandemic and related downturn.

Today, I’m asking you to consider a gift to the Fund for Adams County during this year’s Giving Spree and I’m asking you to support it and all other participating nonprofits with the “Forever” gift option.  

When you make a “forever”, your gift is combined with other “forever gifts” earmarked for the fund or nonprofit you select. Together, these gifts are placed in a permanent charitable fund at the Community Foundation called a designated endowment. “Designated” because it benefits one specific nonprofit or project chosen by you. “Endowment” because the Fund is permanent. The Community Foundation maintains over 250 designated endowments.

Here’s how that endowment becomes a forever gift for the nonprofit you care about: The assets of that designated endowment are invested and any income goes right back into the fund. This allows the designated endowment to grow over time. Once a year the Community Foundation takes 4.5% of the fund and grants it to the nonprofit or program you named. The nonprofit doesn’t need to apply for the annual grant, and when they receive the grant their board may decide how they will use the grant money. 

Our designated endowments are managed and invested in a disciplined, thoughtful manner with a goal to returning the original value of your gift and more to your selected nonprofit. The Community Foundation’s long-term investment pool, where we invest designated endowments, currently holds more than twenty million dollars. This pool is managed by investment firm Brown Advisory, overseen by the Community Foundation’s volunteer Investment & Finance Committee, and guided by the Community Foundation’s Investment & Spending Policy.

Any investment professional will tell you that past performance is no guarantee of future results. However, I am proud to share the Community Foundation’s long-term investment pool’s annualized return (as of September 30, 2021) was 9.7%, net of investment fees since its creation in January 2009.

The forever gifts you make at this year’s Giving Spree will help provide a steady stream of reliable income for decades to come. Your forever gifts will help grow our Fund for Adams County and any of your favorite nonprofit through good times and bad. Your forever gift keeps on giving, no matter what.

This year, I’m asking you to consider adding a gift to the Fund for Adams County (option #3) to support our Community’s permanent grantmaking endowment and checking the “forever” box for your other Giving Spree selections.

Ralph Serpe is President & CEO of the Adams County Community Foundation, the home of the Giving Spree, Adams County’s annual day of giving. Ralph can be reached at 717-337-0060 or rserpe@adamscountycf.org