The Community Foundation of North Florida offers a variety of fund types that can be established by individual donors or business owners.

Donor Advised

A Donor Advised Fund allows donors to have ongoing involvement in deciding how to support charitable causes by recommending grants to qualified nonprofits. Our staff can help identify organizations working to address issues and needs you care about most. We handle the due diligence, ensuring selected nonprofits are in good standing. Your recommendations are submitted to our board for approval; afterward, we distribute grant dollars.

Corporate Advised

A Corporate Advised Fund works in the same manner as a Donor Advised Fund. The only difference is that advisors to the fund are determined and appointed by the corporation.

Designated

A Designated Fund can name one or more specific nonprofit organizations, colleges, or universities to receive the annual fund’s grant distribution. Annual grantmaking to the chosen organization(s) is handled by our staff.

Designated funds can only be established as a permanent Endowed Fund.

Designated funds can support named (or general) scholarships at colleges or universities.

Field of Interest

A Field of Interest fund allows a donor to select specific areas of interest that are most important to their charitable intent such as: the arts, environment, education, animal welfare, etc. Our board selects nonprofit organizations that are making a difference in the specified chosen areas to receive annual grant distributions.

Field of Interest funds can only be established as a permanent Endowed Fund.

Legacy

A donor can commit a planned gift, also known as a Legacy Gift, to the Community Foundation of North Florida during their lifetime.

We offer donors three options for leaving a Legacy gift:

  1. Create an Endowed Designated Fund – specifically designate how the fund’s annual spend balance will be granted. You can designate to an existing CFNF fund or choose a nonprofit organization(s) to directly support.
  1. Create an Endowed Field of Interest Fund – name areas of interest such as education, animals, social services, arts and culture, etc. to receive grants from the fund’s annual spend balance.
  1. Bestow a Legacy Gift – Bestow a Legacy gift to your existing fund or to a nonprofit organization(s) of your choice, a CFNF Agency Endowment Fund(s), the CFNF Helping Today, Shaping Tomorrow Grantmaking Fund or a gift to CFNF to support the mission of the organization.

Fund Class Options

Endowed Fund

An endowed fund is a permanent fund and adheres to a CFNF Board of Directors spending policy contained in the Investment Policy Statement (IPS) that utilizes a formula to determine the amount available to grant from the fund each year. The spending policy is designed to maintain a level of current spending while preserving the endowment in order to support future spending. CFNF shall appropriate for expenditure, for the purposes for which a fund was established, so much of the fund as CFNF deems prudent, in accordance with the Uniform Prudent Management of Institutional Funds Act (UPMIFA) and the adopted CFNF approved spending policy, as amended from time to time.

Endowed funds established before September 30th of the current year will have an available spending balance in January of the upcoming year. Endowed funds established after September 30th of the current year will not have a spending balance until January of the following year.

Non-Endowed Fund

A non-endowed fund is not intended to be a permanent fund. The fund balance of a non-endowed fund is fully expendable less any outstanding grant distributions and/or current support fees.