Sadly, we are all growing accustomed to making charitable donations to support disaster relief. Individual donations provide critical resources to help communities recover from the many disasters–weather, fire, humanitarian, disease, war–that occur each year.

In the wake of Hurricane Ian, and the on-going attack on Ukraine, you may be wondering about how best to support those affected by these storms. We encourage you to reach out to the team at the Community Foundation. We can connect your donors with a variety of options for giving that are trustworthy and effective. Indeed, disaster relief funding is frequently coordinated by community foundations, which are widely viewed as one of the very best vehicles to help donors provide financial support to relief efforts. Individual giving is critically important to any disaster relief effort, and the community foundation can help your clients make an immediate, powerful, and positive impact on the lives of those affected by Hurricane Ian or any disaster.

Especially heartwarming is that many donors are now exploring ways to help improve a community’s readiness for disaster response, including building reserve funds for future disaster relief and bolstering emergency preparedness infrastructure for medical care, food, clothing, and shelter delivered by a network of local, on-the-ground nonprofit organizations.

You can help our region respond to disasters by donating to the Community Foundation Disaster Fund. This endowed fund was created to respond to unexpected major events like storms, fires, chemical spills and other natural and man-made disasters. We are happy to work with you to support this existing fund or to establish field-of-interest or designated funds to ensure that the people in our region remain as safe and supported as possible when disaster strikes. Disaster-preparedness field-of-interest or designated funds at the Community Foundation can be especially attractive because these funds are qualified recipients of QCDs (Qualified Charitable Distributions) from clients’ IRAs.

We look forward to helping you improve the lives of those affected by disasters both here in our community and across the nation and world.