Angelique Leone, Vice President of the Community Foundation of Snohomish County was our guest speaker via ZOOM on Friday, July 31st. She spoke about their Covid-19 Relief Fund.
Before that here is a bit of history of the organization. The Community Foundation of Snohomish County started in 1993 as the Everett Parks Foundation. In 2001 the organization changed its name to the Greater Everett Community Foundation and again in 2015 finally to the Community Foundation of Snohomish County.
Since 2009, the Foundation's average rate of return of their investments since 2009 is $32 million in assets with a pay out of about 14%. Most Foundation's are at 5%. Since their inception, the Foundation has awarded $20 million in grants. The Foundation direction changed a bit under Covid-19. The Foundation convened a partnership and opened the Coronavirus Rapid Response program in March. Funding was used for short-term, safety net needs for the vulnerable while government and other funding sources emerged.
The partners included Snohomish County and the Snohomish Health District for the Coronavirus Rapid Response. The Foundation received $1.4 million in contributions by other Foundations, corporations, individuals and the Gates Foundation. The first $150,000 given out on March 14th. Donations exceeded $1.4 million.
The Foundation was doing business differently. No grants, no reports just trust in the organizations expertise. The Foundation lists 15% as overhead. Angelique commented that "failure is an option - because you learn from these failures".
Every organizations counts. However, there were no funds to individual Food Banks and Senior Centers. The Food Bank distribution was handled collectively. Emails were answered as quickly as possible. Rotary's "Four Way test" is an overlay of their own initiative. When the Foundation distributed the funds, they simply got out of the way and let the recipient organizations do their work. Some of the lessons learned besides getting out of the way, were innovation happens; collaboration occurs and racial equity and social justice issues are amplified.
Now what? The Foundation will never go back. Donor focus vs. community/non-profit focus; plus grants will look different and funding will look different. There was so much more that Angelique reported that we could go on and on. To find out more about the Community Foundation of Snohomish County, visit their website at www.CF-SC.org.