Your Personal Charitable Roadmap

Dear Fundholder,

At Akron Community Foundation, we believe a charitable legacy comprises much more than monetary gifts. Every donor has a unique story, and your charitable legacy is an important part of our shared history.

Strategic philanthropic planning today can help you be more impactful with the dollars you grant in the future. Allowing us to help you intentionally craft your charitable giving plan will help us better tailor the opportunities we share with you and will help you evaluate requests you receive to ensure they align with your charitable goals.

By completing your charitable roadmap now, you will create a vision for your future philanthropic efforts. Your roadmap will not only help you direct your giving, but it will also continue to provide inspiration long after you are gone.

Respectfully, 

Jill Sellers Director of Donor Engagement        330-436-5610 jsellers@akroncf.org

Karen Hrdlicka Director, The Center for Family Philanthropy 330-436-5640 khrdlicka@akroncf.org

 

By completing the checklist below, you'll help us understand where you want to make an impact in the world and how we can better tailor the information and opportunities we provide to you. It also allows us to connect you to other donors (but only if you wish!) who have the same passions and interests as you.

Please review the following categories and select all the areas you are interested in impacting with your grants. Once you've completed the checklist below, we invite you to think about your top three areas of interest and your "why" for those areas, which will make your grantmaking more meaningful to you.

Now, please review your list and select your top three choices, writing a few words about why each choice has meaning to you. Example: Youth development is important to me. I am a retired teacher and I saw the difference for my students who participated in mentoring. I now volunteer as a mentor myself. 

As your philanthropic partner, Akron Community Foundation can help you customize your giving plan. One of the many tools we use to help define your philanthropic intent is the creation of "I" statements. Please review the two lists below and check all that apply currently. We will use this checklist in the future to assess if your needs and goals have changed.

Every donor brings a unique story to their giving journey, and we believe it's important to document that story for a variety of reasons, including:

• It will help the foundation understand the "why" behind your giving so we can better tailor the information we share with you.
• Whether you choose to pass your donor-advised fund on to future generations or to leave it for our board of directors' discretion, it can help them understand who you were and the impact you aimed to make through your philanthropy.

On the following pages, you will find all the information we think would be helpful to document your story. We realize it may seem like a lot of information and thought. For this reason, we have divided the following storytelling tool into three steps titled “Past,” “Present” and “Future." If you prefer to record your story verbally, we would be happy to interview you virtually or in person instead.

Whatever you choose, we invite you to include personal touches, like photos or videos, that highlight your philanthropic journey. Here are some examples of how other donors have documented their stories:

• A family tree indicating the nonprofit board service of three generations, with continued additions of current family members.
• A book that tells the history of a family business.
• Minutes of family meetings as they created a family mission statement and the resulting mission statement.

You will often hear Akron Community Foundation talk about the 4Ts of philanthropy. Below we define each of the 4Ts and would like you to tell us if and how you are currently participating in them.