- GivingOpen a charitable account. Honor someone with a memorial or honorarium. Find a giving opportunity.
- Grants & ScholarshipsApply for a grant or scholarship. Check on your application.
- MembershipJoin our members to underwrite civic leadership projects.
- ProjectsLearn about civic leadership initiatives. Give to an initiative.
Open a Fund
Types of Funds
The Foundation offers several types of charitable funds. They can be an endowmed fund or a spenddown fund. Only investment earnings from an endowed fund are used to make grants, whereas donors can use all the money in a spenddown fund to underwrite nonprofits.
Some donors prefer to open both spenddowns and endowments, allowing them to spend a certain amount while preserving the principal in an endowment to assist nonprofits for years to come.
FUND TYPES:
Donor Advised Funds and Corporate Advised Funds: Comprising more than 40% of all funds at the Foundation, they allow the donor to recommend grants to specific organizations. As with all funds, the Foundation handles all the paperwork.
Designated Beneficiary Fund: Donors use these funds to automatically give to a nonprofit of their choice, such as one that works with libraries or a school. They put money in an endowment and designate in legal documents a nonprofit that will receive earnings from it. The designated beneficiary of the fund can be changed during their life or in their wills.
Field of Interest Fund: This type of fund is managed by the Foundation and its board or by a committee set up by donors. Each fund is dedicated to an area, such as education, health care or community service. An example: Baton Rouge jazz lovers created the River City Jazz Coalition Fund, which provides money for an annual jazz series at the Manship Theatre.
Scholarship Fund: Scholarships provide grants for tuition and school expenses. The Foundation can assist you in structuring a selection process that finds worthy students for your scholarships. We manage our scholarships online, making it simple for students to apply while also making it effortless for people who have established scholarships.
Unrestricted Fund: This type of fund permits the Foundation to invest in emerging opportunities. With no restrictions placed by fund donors, decisions are made by our board. These flexible funds have underpinned some of the Foundation's largest projects, including the Shaw Center for the Arts.
Organization (Agency) Fund: These funds are a means for charities to use services of the Foundation. We manage assets, provide local knowledge and adminstrative assitance to nonprofits with organization funds.
Support Organizations: They are like nonprofit subsidiaries of the Foundation. Donors deposit assets into the support organizations, which are managed by their own boards. Grants from support organizations are approved by the boards of the SOs. Like other funds, support organizations get all the services provided by us. Generally, fund donors begin support organizations with a minimum donation of $1 million.
