In the Business of Giving

If you’re a business owner, odds are you already give back to your community. Like many charitably-minded people, your business likely sponsors events, makes in-kind donations, donates cash to favorite organizations, and may provide employee assistance programs (or would like to). Many local business owners work with the North Georgia Community Foundation to continue to give back to the community where they built their businesses and have developed lasting relationships in addition to supporting the employees within their organization.

The North Georgia Community Foundation offers a variety of tools to help you build and grow your Corporate Giving Program, including:

• Corporate Advised Fund. Establishing a corporate-advised fund helps you organize your company’s giving in a convenient, 501(c)(3)-qualified structure.
• Grant-making Administration and Strategy. You and your colleagues likely receive dozens of requests each month from community organizations requesting sponsorships and monetary donations. The team at the North Georgia Community Foundation can help you create and implement a customized grant cycle as a strategy for responding to and evaluating those requests to align with your company’s goals for supporting and prioritizing causes.
• Corporate Scholarship Fund. Corporations passionate about education can open a Scholarship Fund to support someone in continuing their studies. This Fund offers a way for your company to instill the power of education and encourage workforce development.
• Employee Giving Campaigns. The North Georgia Community Foundation’s system to receive and process donations can help you and your employees respond quickly and meaningfully to disasters and other urgent community needs.
• Employee Assistance Program (EAP). Many businesses want to give back to employees when they are experiencing difficult times. An EAP lets you do just that with guidelines designed by your organization. Whether you have an existing program to transfer or are creating a new one, NGCF can help you develop and strengthen the program guidelines and the application used to evaluate requests. By opening an EAP fund, NGCF can manage the entire program for you, which will ease the administrative burden and hassle for your employees. And because the fund is invested, you have the ability to continue growing the fund.

The North Georgia Community Foundation is glad to help you deepen your business’s impact and connection to your community, customers, and employees by creating a Corporate Giving Program that supports causes that align with the wide range of your objectives.
Interested? Contact Michelle Prater, NGCF President/CEO: mprater@ngcf.org

The team at the North Georgia Community Foundation is honored to serve as a resource and sounding board as you build your charitable plans and pursue your philanthropic objectives for making a difference in the community. This newsletter is provided for informational purposes only. It is not intended as legal, accounting, or financial planning advice. Please consult your tax or legal advisor to learn how this information might apply to your own situation.