The Family Center/La Familia: Building a $1 Million Endowment for Latinx Family Support Services and Early Childhood Education
Organizational Size: Small: ($1 million – $5 million)
Summary:
Endowments are for everyone. Ivanhoe Development worked with The Family Center/La Familia to design and implement an endowment to ensure the organization’s financial sustainability in Latinx communities.
The Hurdle
Endowments are often thought of as a financial pie in the sky, attainable only for large institutions like universities, not for smaller nonprofits. Only about 1 in 10 U.S. nonprofits maintains endowment funds. But that is simply not true.
Endowment funds build community confidence in the organization and strengthen an organization’s funding portfolio. However, most nonprofit leaders may not know which type of endowment is right for them, how to build the financial infrastructure to manage it, or how an endowment fits into their overall financial portfolio.
The Answer
One of the first questions that must be asked when thinking about an endowment is “What are the strategic goals of the endowment?”
Ivanhoe Development and The Family Center/La Familia staff worked together to pinpoint key ways that endowment funds would further the mission through:
Strengthening organizational capacity to serve families
Advancing organizational and community leadership
Strengthening governance for long-term stability
Cultivate meaningful donor relationships
After receiving word that the organization had the opportunity to secure endowment seed funding, Ivanhoe Development and La Familia/The Family Center worked to create all the necessary components to launch an endowment.
The teams created the blueprint and work plan for securing and stewarding a successful endowment, ensuring the funds are managed effectively. These included:
The creation of a Community Endowment Advisory Board
Foundational endowment financial policies, such as: Fiscal Policies and Procedures, Liquidity and/or Reserve Policy, Investment Policy Statement, Gift Acceptance Policy, and Endowment Community Advisory Group policies
The hiring and onboarding of a wealth management advisor (and the articulation of what the organization’s needs were when releasing an RFP)
Community Endowment Kick-off Event (mission-aligned get-together to announce the endowment and what it means for the community)
Securing an endowment is just the beginning. How an organization stewards and utilizes endowment funds relative to other financial tools (grants, corporate sponsorship, PRIs, MRIs, etc.) is imperative to ensuring a diverse and strong financial portfolio.
