What About “Overhead”? A Conversation About Stewardship & Trust

It’s a fair question, and one we welcome.

When you make a charitable gift, you want to know your dollars are serving the community, not simply covering office expenses. At your Community Foundation of White County, we believe transparency is part of stewardship, so we want to share exactly how this works.

Today, the Foundation stewards more than $19 million in assets across more than 150 individual funds. Each fund exists because someone cared deeply about White County’s future and trusted us to help carry that vision forward.

To responsibly manage those funds, a small administrative fee is assessed annually. Depending on the type of fund, 1.5% or 2% is calculated using a three-year trailing average of the fund’s balance. This approach smooths out market fluctuations and ensures consistency and fairness over time.

Those administrative dollars support the essential work required to steward charitable funds well. This includes investment oversight, grant processing, financial management, audits, donor services, scholarship administration, and community leadership efforts.

Our total operating budget this year is under $320,000. For an organization stewarding $19 million in charitable assets and facilitating hundreds of grants and scholarships, we operate intentionally lean.

Over the past five years, the Foundation has grown significantly. Our assets have increased, our grantmaking has expanded, and our work has evolved. We have launched new initiatives like the Youth Philanthropy Council. We have deepened our efforts around mental wellness, veterans, childcare, and youth development. We have invested more time in data gathering, research, collaboration, and community convening to better understand local needs and align funding strategies accordingly.

This growth has not simply meant “more grants.” It has meant more responsibility.

We are currently exploring the addition of a Program Director to support our internal efforts. This role would focus on strengthening grant processes, coordinating community initiatives, managing data and evaluation, and ensuring that our strategies are implemented with excellence. It would allow us to better support nonprofit partners, steward donor intent, and sustain the level of thoughtful leadership our community deserves.

This is not about adding overhead for its own sake. It is about ensuring that as the Foundation grows, our capacity to serve grows with it.

Additionally, a grant received in 2017 helped us establish an operating endowment. That fund was created specifically to provide long-term support for Foundation operations, reducing reliance on annual fundraising for administrative needs and strengthening our sustainability.

Healthy organizations require healthy infrastructure. Just as we encourage our nonprofit partners to build strong foundations for their work, we believe it is our responsibility to do the same thoughtfully, modestly, and transparently.

Every dollar entrusted to the Community Foundation is stewarded with care. Our role is not only to distribute grants, but to ensure that charitable resources in White County are managed wisely today and preserved for generations to come.

If you ever have questions about how your gift works, we welcome the conversation. Strong communities are built on trust, and we are grateful for yours.