Since 2001, the Community Foundation of Southwest Missouri has given more than $2.7 million to a wide variety of causes in Jasper County the surrounding area.
Michelle Ducre, executive director of the Community Foundation of Southwest Missouri, said the foundation is entering a new decade with new money and big plans to fund good things in the area.
“The average grant we give is between $500 and $1,000 and again as we can increase the ability to have more funding, we can grant even more which is exciting,” Ducre said. “I like to give away money. We have a lot of charitable organizations that do a lot of great work and it would be neat to really be able to give them stronger support.”
The Community Foundation of Southwest Missouri is a local affiliate of the Community Foundation of the Ozarks. It’s a collection of funds set up by individuals and companies to give money to worthy causes in Jasper, Newton, Barton and McDonald counties.
In 2009, the Community Foundation of Southwest Missouri added seven new funds, bringing to 50 the number of individual and corporate funds that serve this area.
Promoting a cause
One fund added in 2009 was the Vivian León Fund named for the wife of former Missouri Southern State University President Julio León, who, for 20 years, headed up the Missouri Southern International Piano Competition, a competition held every two years that brought internationally known pianists to Joplin.
The last competition was in 2008 and the last event sponsored by the group was in March 2009 when the 2008 winner, Avan Yu, performed at Missouri Southern.
After that concert, the group disbanded, but before it did, it donated the last of its money to a fund with the Community Foundation of Southwest Missouri.
“The Missouri Southern International Piano Competition dissolved and the board decided that they wanted to continue to do some kind of giving and set up the Vivian León fund to honor the wonderful work that Vivian had done for over 20 years for the Piano Competition,” Ducre said. “To continue to promote musical arts in the community, later this year we will be able to make the first distribution from that fund. It’s an endowment fund and we will be able to make a $4,000 distribution and we can divide that over a few applicant groups.
“These are grants to organizations that will bring in musical arts performances or for schools that do musical performances. The focus is preferred to be classical piano but should that not be the case, they will still look at classical music and classical music education, which is exciting. We’ve been receiving donations to the fund from donors throughout the community and that’s really exciting because that increases our ability to give even more.”
Services to all
Ducre said her foundation is set up to make giving easier for people who want to donate to causes of their choice.
She said the foundation takes care of the complicated, boring and massive amounts of paperwork required by the IRS for tax-deductible donations.
“Rather than, at tax time, having to go hunt for all of those letters, we send them a tax statement from here with the charitable gifts that were made,” Ducre said. “We do all the accounting for them so they don’t have to try to scramble and go sit down and figure out all the gifts they’ve received and did they send a tax letter, we take care of those acknowledgements.
The group can also help donors make sure their money is going to the right place.
“We can make recommendations to the donors about opportunities to give grants to projects, and that’s also helpful,” Ducre said. “You can’t be everywhere and know everything. We just make it easier for the donor and the business owner to give.”
Ducre said the foundation helps families and corporations set up donor advised funds.
It also serves as a place that can manage the bequests of people who want to leave a legacy behind to support one cause or many causes after they die.
“We take care of any IRS reporting for them, we do all the acknowledgements for donations received to their fund, we track that,” Ducre said. “We also help process all those donor checks they want to give to charities or schools or churches. We do all of that for them. It’s a lot of paperwork, but it’s a lot of paperwork the donor doesn’t have to do. We have a great accounting staff through the Community Foundation of the Ozarks, it’s part of the affiliation, so for about three quarters of one percent on an annual basis, we’re able to provide those services for donors.”
For people and groups seeking money, the foundation is one place with several sources of money.
“We do an announcement every year for people interested in applying for grants.
We will meet in a few weeks to start talking about that process but usually it’s around March or April and we’ll do an announcement through the paper and people can make application through us.”
Ducre said the foundation is helping teach young people how to be philanthropic in the future.
“We have something called a youth empowerment project where students at area high schools can set up a youth philanthropy group and they look at community projects that benefit youth,” Ducre said. “We give them a $500 grant to get started and then they have to take the responsibility to create the awareness and raise more funds and then do charitable grant making in the process. You’re teaching them to be philanthropic early on and in a big way. It teaches them that they can be a part of solving community problems which is so exciting.”
Contact info
For more information about the Community Foundation of Southwest Missouri, people can contact Michelle Ducre, executive director of the foundation, at her Carthage office at 221 W. Fourth St., Suite 11, Carthage, Mo., 64836. Phone number is 417-359-5534 and email is mducre@cfozarks.org.
