Quad Cities Community Foundation celebrates the local impact donors have on the region during Community Foundation Week

The Quad Cities Community Foundation is joining community foundations around the country in a nationwide celebration November 12-18, 2019, to recognize the increasingly important role community foundations play in fostering local collaboration and innovation to address persistent civic and economic challenges.

During this time, community foundations come together to share and reflect on stories of impact over the past year. Read some of our recent stories here, here and here. In this milestone year, community foundations in our Quad Cities region—and across the state of Iowa and Illinois—have much to celebrate.

Community foundations are independent, public entities which steward philanthropic resources from individual and institutional donors to local nonprofit organizations that are the heart of strong, vibrant communities. “Our work is not only about partnering with donors to give to their home. It is about contributing to a region that has a vision to be cool, creative, connected and prosperous—and to do that through philanthropy,” said Sherry Ristau, president and CEO of the Quad Cities Community Foundation.  

That has manifested in a number of different ways in 2019. This year, the Quad Cities Community Foundation worked alongside community leaders across the public, private and nonprofit sector to support disaster recovery efforts following spring 2019 flooding throughout their regions, among various other efforts throughout the state. Grant and scholarship programs infused dollars into efforts and people who are transforming the community.

This year also marked the 15th Anniversary of the County Endowment Fund Program in the state of Iowa. More than $11.41 million dollars were distributed to 84 county community foundations across the state through the program, which is funded with eight-tenths of one percent of Iowa’s commercial gaming tax revenue. Each community foundation received approximately $135,000. Of that amount, the recipients will grant 75 percent directly to local nonprofits and charitable causes in their communities. The remaining 25 percent is added to each county’s unrestricted endowment fund to provide a permanent source of funding for future projects and programs.

The Endow Iowa Tax Credit program launched in 2004 has also leveraged over $287 million in endowment gifts to support Iowa communities and charitable causes. The program has made nearly $66 million in tax credits available to Iowans who contribute to an endowed fund at an accredited community foundation in the state. The state of Illinois has similar legislation pending to introduce Endow Illinois. While it has not yet passed, it does have strong and growing support in the legislature.

Community Foundations Week was created in 1989 by former president George H.W. Bush to recognize the work of community foundations throughout America and their collaborative approach to working with the public, private, and nonprofit sectors to address community problems. As community foundations find solutions for communities large and small, urban and rural—it is the collective work of these organizations that will have the most profound impact.