As a community foundation, we have two kinds of resources available to address community needs: restricted and unrestricted.

Restricted Resources

Our restricted resources, which represent the greatest portion of the Community Foundation’s community investments, include scholarships to individuals for education beyond high school, endowment funds established by or in support of specific nonprofit organizations and endowment funds created to support specific fields of interest. In addition, we hold more than 200 donor-advised funds, through which we help donors support their unique interests.

Sometimes these investments directly align with our community investment priorities of equity and education; most often they complement them and support broader community needs and opportunities. This is the role of a community foundation: to facilitate philanthropy across many issues, in many forms.

Unrestricted Resources

Our unrestricted resources are used to address Kalamazoo County’s most pressing needs, as informed by community conditions, feedback from community partners and supporting data.

These investments are primarily managed through our responsive grantmaking process by our Community Investment team. We also make program-related investments (low-interest loans) that strengthen the economic well-being of our community and have a social impact.

We are working to increase our unrestricted resources through a variety of donor relations efforts. However, our changing systems and change life trajectories for individuals. Thank you for being part of our work. unrestricted resources are limited and we expect all our responsive grants to demonstrate potential for high impact as well as alignment with equity and education.

Your Community Foundation’s highest investments will support work that is best able to address a demonstrated community need, work toward