Donor Stories

Shortly after they retired, Al Garcia and Sandra Edwards established an Advised Fund at the Kalamazoo Community Foundation. Recently, they shared how it is addressing the needs of the Kalamazoo community as well as nurturing their family.

Al: Sandy and I talked about how good Kalamazoo has been to us, and we wanted to give something back that involved input from our children and eventually the grandchildren. We thought first about starting a family foundation, but the requirements were very complicated.

Sandy: A financial planner mentioned that we could accomplish what we wanted through the Community Foundation. So we made an appointment to talk about it with the staff. It was important for me that we really connect with them personally, and we did. I liked their whole atmosphere.

With our Advised Fund, we make suggestions regarding what nonprofits we want to support. It changes from year to year depending on what’s most needed in the community that year. Community has been a theme in our lives, and we tend to go with a balance of contributions to the arts, education and social services. For a community to be whole, I think, it has to keep that balance.

Al: Choosing what to support isn’t a burden and doesn’t take much of our time. The Community Foundation knows what we’re interested in, keeps an eye out, and helps us to prioritize. They’re in a central position to see what’s going on in the community. We trust that they are keeping abreast of what’s needed and which of the many area nonprofits could make best use of our limited funds.

Sandy: A fund at the Community Foundation is a win/win because it’s not only a wonderful way to invest your money, but it creates a mutually nurturing circle. You give to your community to keep it strong, and a strong community keeps giving back to you and your family. I think philanthropy is a wonderful way to keep your "emotional muscles" strong — a way to be humanitarian and to serve yourself as well. In that way, it’s maybe almost selfish!

Al: I believe there are many stages we go through in life, and we need to navigate them all to fully develop as human beings. We’ve received a lot for many years from this community. It’s been a wonderful place to raise children, enjoy the arts and recreation — and all very reasonably priced because other people were contributing.

Now that we’re older it’s our turn to be on the giving end. If we don’t make that transition, I don’t think we’ll have truly lived or reached our full development.

Sandy: Being involved in giving like this is a good thing for mentoring and teaching your children — a great opportunity for family growth. I think it’s also part of the proper role for older people, giving substance to our lives after retirement. Philanthropy is part of our responsibility as wise sages and community elders.

Seventeen years ago, Rick and Mary Halpert created an Advised Fund at the Kalamazoo Community Foundation. Recently, Rick talked about why that fund was created and shared five reasons they have continued to work with the Community Foundation.

As a lawyer, I do pro bono work. A friend of mine, Bill Becker, asked me to find a lawyer for a young quadriplegic man who’d been hit by an inattentive driver. I ended up giving him several hundred hours of time. Bill then arranged for a gift to the Community Foundation in my name. I was shocked when it turned out to be a $10,000 gift!

Frankly, I’d always thought of the Community Foundation as a place for families like the Gilmores and Upjohns, not ordinary folks like us. When I looked into the their work, what I found was contrary to this. It helps anyone with charitable giving motives find the most effective way to accomplish their goals. As time went on, I realized that this organization is a jewel in the community.

If someone asked me, I’d make five points about our experience with the Community Foundation. First, Mary and I take giving as seriously as we take spending. We want our funds to be used appropriately for purposes we care about. They help us identify organizations whose requests meet its guidelines, but I’ve found it also is happy to suggest support for nonprofits that don’t fall within those guidelines. The Community Foundation brings to our attention ways to serve the community that we would never know about otherwise.

Second, one of the Community Foundation’s major goals is to help givers learn how to accomplish their missions. It has educated us over the years and helped us to understand the whole concept of philanthropy — almost like going to college on giving. Mary and I are more astute in how we look at charities and where our funds might do the most good.

Third, their staff are trusted leaders. They have reputations in the community as people who are reliable and knowledgeable. This means that Mary and I don’t have to do a lot of the research and legwork for our giving that we might otherwise have to do.

Also, because the Community Foundation has a sterling reputation in the community, this gives credibility to the organizations it supports. If the Community Foundation has its imprimatur on a project, it means it’s legitimate. And because it has a track record of success, this means we can feel comfortable with the advice we receive from them.

Finally, the Community Foundation does an excellent job with the mechanics of giving, which reduces our burden. It keeps precise track of the distributions we’ve made and which charities we like. It gives us legally proper receipts. And it is thorough in its due diligence, assuring that our charitable giving always meets IRS standards. 

To summarize, the Community Foundation will help you identify your charitable wishes, hopes and goals and then bring them into reality so that you feel good about what you’re accomplishing. After many years of experiencing this, we consider ourselves fortunate friends of the foundation.

Rick and Martha Omilian have donated seed money to establish the Remembering Maggie Fund — an Advised Fund under development at the Kalamazoo Community Foundation — in memory of their daughter, Maggie Wardle. In a recent conversation, they shared Maggie's story and spoke about their relationship with the Community Foundation.

Rick: In 2009 we donated money to start an Advised Fund at the Kalamazoo Community Foundation. When it’s fully funded, the cause we want to use it for is prevention of relationship and dating violence. We decided to do this based on what happened to our daughter, Maggie. In 1999 she was a 19-year-old coed at Kalamazoo College and was killed by her ex-boyfriend, who then killed himself.

We want to make sure that her life is remembered and that some good to others comes from her death. We don’t want to just quietly grieve in a corner.

Martha: A month or so before she died, Maggie wrote in her school portfolio "I am no longer content to live a private life. The things I do can make a difference." The Remembering Maggie Fund is one way we’re honoring this commitment she made and her unfulfilled potential.

Rick: We both have a background in helping others. Martha was a psychiatric nurse, and I was a school administrator and special education school teacher for a long time. So we want to focus our giving on youth.

Over the years we’ve talked a lot about what happened to Maggie and her ex-boyfriend and how this could happen. She was a very bright young woman and she had learned a lot about relationships from us. She knew all of the things she shouldn’t do, how to be careful, and how important it was not to let some man control her life. But it still happened. That’s why we want to do this — to help kids understand the characteristics of healthy relationships and what it takes to have them.

Martha: We knew about the Community Foundation because Maggie had previously applied for a scholarship. So we felt comfortable talking with them. After talking with them and many other organizations in the area, we discovered that no one was specifically dealing with dating relationship violence, even those that deal with domestic violence.

As to the schools, the state Department of Human Services has posted a curriculum online and it’s available to them. But there’s no time in the day to teach it, and there’s no money to support specific extracurricular programs.”

Rick: We need to raise $10,000 more in the next two years to fully establish the Remembering Maggie Fund and begin supporting the relationship violence prevention activities we’re committed to.

We’re very comfortable that the Community Foundation clearly understands and supports our mission. If we can’t find enough financial partners to grow the fund and reach our goal of $25,000 by July 1, 2012, they will help us use, through other channels, the money already collected. So even if we can’t establish the Advised Fund as we hope, the funds will still benefit the children in the community and reflect our desires.