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The Marin County Jail Needs a Better Chef: How Community Foundations Can Solve Local Problems

The Marin County Jail has not received good reviews on Yelp.1

“It ain’t the jail that's so bad… I just got out last night for drinking a beer in public. Everybody in there except for the murderers … are chill. No one really messes with you but the food is total… [stomach challenging].”

This is very surprising when you consider the Marin County lockup isn’t your standard jail. Not only is it located in one of the wealthiest counties in the US, but the county has the tenth largest community foundation in America with assets of $1.6 billion.2 Although the county only has a population of 270,000, their foundation is larger than the community foundations of many states. 3  A grant from the community foundation would immediately solve the problem of inadequate cuisine at the jail.

Unfortunately, there are other seemingly valid complaints about the local prison facilities. The visiting rooms are filthy. The rooms where you wait to enter the visiting rooms are also filthy. These rooms also smell bad. Ordinarily, these wouldn’t be causes for comment, but as I said, this is no standard jail.  Why? Because it is part of the Marin County Civic Center designed by none other than Frank Lloyd Wright.

When it came time to build the aforementioned lockup, the county had to select a world-famous design team, so the jail would complement—not detract— from this stunning architectural triumph by Wright. And it is stunning which you will note in the photographs if you follow the link in the footnote.4  A grant from the Marin County Community Foundation could solve these problems, so I leave it to them.

Most of us want to improve our locality and ameliorate problems in our cities, towns, and neighborhoods. Accomplishing these tasks are the reason community foundations exist and why their numbers continue to increase. There are almost 800 such foundations in the US with combined assets of $48 billion.5

 Why would your clients be interested in contributing to their local community foundation? First, the emphasis is on local issues as mentioned. Staff members and boards of directors come from the area and know the territory.

A second reason your clients would want to contribute to a community foundation is the ability to create a private foundation within a community foundation. They can do this by establishing a donor-advised fund within the foundation. Such a structure will allow them to direct the management of the assets and distributions of the funds.

In this arrangement, the community foundation itself files all relevant reports with Federal and state governments. They do this by rolling all the accounts together for accounting purposes. Their action relieves your clients from having to do this. Another reason clients like such an arrangement is they can make one large contribution to their donor-advised fund at a community foundation and take an immediate tax deduction. The money can remain within the account while donors decide which charitable groups they want to assist. So, your clients can make their contribution now, take their tax deduction, and decide weeks, months, or years later where they want to direct the money.

It is important to note that you can contribute to a community foundation without establishing a donor-advised fund. You can just write them a check and take your deduction. Most community foundations run programs of their own as well as making grants to various organizations within their locale, so they always need unrestricted contributions.

To be clear, while many community foundations house donor-advised funds, foundations, and funds are separate and distinct entities. You can also establish a donor-advised fund without going through a community foundation by opening an account in one the donor-advised funds offered by Fidelity, Vanguard, and many other financial services firms.

There are many ways to give but helping your local community is a cause most people have an interest in, and you may want to consider recommending community foundations to your clients.

 

To learn more about this topic, register for our Charitable Foundation Management course or Charitable Giving Conversation Online Self-Study.

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Resources: 

 1 https://preview.tinyurl.com/MarinCoJailYelp

2 https://tinyurl.com/CFbyassetsize2016

3 https://tinyurl.com/MarinCowikipedia

4 http://franklloydwrightsites.com/california/marin/marincounty.html

5 https://www.clevelandfoundation.org/about/history/

Contributing Writer: Subject Matter Expert Charles McCain