Increase the Impact of Your Year-End Giving with Berkshire Taconic
Since 1987, Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation has offered donors a partner for creating real impact in the region.
Every holiday season, email inboxes and mailboxes alike start to overflow with requests for charitable giving. With so many worthy causes in the region to choose from, however, it can be hard to select which organizations align with your personal passions and have a proven track record for creating meaningful change for the people, places, and issues that need it most. Since 1987, Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation (BTCF) has offered donors in the Rural Intelligence region a trusted partner for creating real impact for hundreds of non-profit organizations across Berkshire, Columbia, northeast Dutchess, and northwest Litchfield counties.
As a community foundation, Berkshire Taconic works to improve the region by encouraging philanthropy, pooling and investing resources, addressing urgent needs, and supporting individuals and nonprofits through grants and scholarships—with over $800 thousand in scholarships awarded last year alone. Today, the community foundation manages over 550 funds that put over $14 million into action each year. As regional charitable giving experts, the philanthropic services team at Berkshire Taconic specializes in guiding and supporting donors wherever they are in their giving journeys.
Anyone who regularly gives money to charities knows that the journey from selecting an organization to filing all the tax paperwork can take a ton of time and energy. For those looking to simplify and streamline their year-end giving efforts, Berkshire Taconic provides a simple, effective, and flexible fund type available to individuals, families, or businesses known as a donor advised fund (DAF).
With a DAF, donors receive assistance in researching and vetting charitable organizations and can make contributions to their fund and recommend grants on their own timeline, while Berkshire Taconic handles all the investment and administrative details. In addition to the ease of giving, donors can also invest their DAF contributions and grow the fund over time, increasing their impact on local causes that can create transformative change.
“Berkshire Taconic does a great job of working with donors to direct funds and energies to places that need them,” says Matthew King, a Berkshire County resident who with his husband Brian Cruey opened a DAF that provides a variety of grants, including to organizations working on land conservation and protection and diversity initiatives that support gay people and gay youth. Through their DAF, they were also able to fully leverage the matching program offered by King’s employer, allowing them to supercharge their giving efforts. In the years since they opened their fund, King and Cruey have deepened their ties in the community and with Berkshire Taconic. “We very much love the community, want to be part of it, and do what we can to support it in many different ways,” says King.
To learn more about Donor Advised Funds through Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation, visit Berkshiretaconic.org or email Kara Mikulich, Chief Philanthropy Officer at kmikulich@berkshiretaconic.org.
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