Greater Kansas City Community Foundation

A Summer of Sharing

Summer is a great time for visiting friends, near and far. In July, the Greater Kansas City Community Foundation convened representatives from sixteen foundations to share the positive impact of DonorEdge®. DonorEdge® has made a difference not only in Kansas City, but also in Columbus, Nashville, Denver, Houston, and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Our guests enjoyed learning from each other...and they sure enjoyed the Plaza! Highlights from our road trips outside of Kansas City included visits with our colleagues at community foundations in Des Moines, Silicon Valley, Seattle and Florida.

But it is hard to top the visit last week by 16 staff and board members from the Baton Rouge Area Foundation. That foundation, along with the donors, nonprofits and community leaders it represents, has experienced two years like none other. Ravaged by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the entire South Louisiana region is in the midst of a challenging transformation. The Baton Rouge Area Foundation is a great example of a community foundation that has taken the lead on a critical community issue--developing land plans for the cities in the region, creating toolkits for rebuilding, and initiating the first comprehensive plan for all of South Louisiana.

To be as inspired as we were, you can access the plan at LouisianaSpeaks.org and learn more about the Baton Rouge Area Foundation at www.braf.org. You will see what a community foundation can do--whether the challenge is hurricane relief, ensuring that each child has the opportunity for quality education, or providing access to health care for all citizens. What is important to you is important to us. Thanks for being part of the Greater Kansas City Community Foundation--your foundation--as we fulfill your dreams for Kansas City through the power of giving.

Giving...Think Outside the Box

What a weekend of celebrations! Saturday was Eva's first birthday, and she enjoyed every minute of all the attention. Her three-year-old sister "helped" her open all of her presents, which included several of her very own outfits (versus the hand-me-downs that make up her wardrobe!), a piggy bank, and a talking frog. Eva's six-year-old sister, Ann, insisted that Eva wanted a six-layer cake with both chocolate and vanilla, so I did my best.

Sunday's event was a party of a different variety. I attended a gathering of the board of directors of the Eastland Community Foundation, one of the Greater Kansas City Community Foundation's regional affiliates, to celebrate the board's terrific work in getting the word out about the new Charity Giving Card. The number of cards in circulation is approaching 300—just in the Eastland alone! Charity Giving Cards are a great way to celebrate a birthday, promotion, or any special occasion. Anyone can order a card online at www.gkccf.org and give the gift of giving.

The next birthday in my family is Ann, who turns seven in October. Instead of buying her toys that will end up wilting in a corner of the playroom after just a few short weeks, I am going to order her a Charity Giving Card. With my help, she can select a DonorEdge® nonprofit online and grant the face value of the card to a good cause. And the icing on the cake is that I get a charitable tax deduction! 

So. Isn't it time that you started thinking outside the box?

Thanks to you!

You just never know when you try something new.

Five years ago, the Greater Kansas City Community Foundation launched DonorEdge® in response to increasing demand for high-quality information about nonprofit effectiveness and capacity. In just five years, what began as an admittedly cumbersome online research tool has evolved into a dynamic, easy-to-use interactive system where nonprofits, donors and the general public can access statistics and trends that demonstrate the margin of excellence charitable dollars create in our community.

The success of DonorEdge® is thanks to you—the donors to the Community Foundation who were willing to give it a try, local foundations who began using DonorEdge® to inform grant making, members of the general public who have sought worthy recipients for donations on www.donoredge.org, and, most of all, the more than 600 nonprofit organizations who diligently input and update profile information to earn the Check mark—a sign that an organization is at the top of its game.

We could not have built DonorEdge® alone. That is why it is most important that I pass along a rewarding piece of external validation that our collective efforts in Kansas City are paying off. The Hewlett Foundation featured DonorEdge® in its 2006 annual report, just released, in the President’s Statement at http://annualreport.hewlett.org/.

Thanks a million for your partnership in innovation!

Open Doors

All of my babies take after me in that none of them walks before 15 months . . . . and it doesn't look like Eva will be an exception. At 11 1/2 months, she is perfectly satisfied motoring around on all fours. And quite adept she is! It is entertaining to watch her grab a toy in each hand and move across a room at lightening speed on knees and elbows.

Eva lunges toward any open door, especially the door to our bedroom closet. She hears the squeak of the hinges and ZOOM she's got her hand on the door frame seconds after the door closes. What's the attraction? The pile of old shoes? The bag of drycleaning begging for someone to drop it off on that rare day when no one is running late for work? But to Eva it is all fascinating. Perfectly natural for a baby to want to learn everything she can about an exciting new world that is not yet even a year old in her eyes.

Maybe we should all be a little more curious about the place we live—this region we all call Kansas City, whether we live in Liberty or Lee's Summit, Lenexa or Olathe. A place that almost two million people call home. So I ask myself, how often do I get out into our community? Are there streets, neighborhoods, even towns I've never seen? Neighborhoods filled with people who, like the donors who have established nearly 2,000 charitable funds at the Community Foundation, care about the quality of life every person who lives here?

Before the summer is over, next time I see an open door to a part of our city I've never visited, I'm going to let my curiosity get the best of me and go see what's on the other side. What about you?