The ECF legacy giving program operates much like a community foundation. Community foundations are:
- tax exempt, non-profit, philanthropic organizations with the long term goal of building permanent funds for the broad-based public benefit of the residents in a given area.
- designed to pool small and large contributions into a coordinated investment and grant making facility dedicated primarily to the social improvement of a given place.
- a flexible, efficient, and tax-effective way for donors to ensure their charitable giving achieves the greatest possible impact.
Donors from across the Diocese can contribute their funds to ECF (either in life or upon their passing). When the gift matures, a disbursement(s) will be made back to the donor’s parish based on the donor’s wishes. The power of this model is that we can invest and manage these pooled funds much more easily (and at a higher rate of return) that all the individual parishes could do on their own.