to tell you about jeffrey but i want to welcome to the show jeffrey thanks for coming on i know you're busy guy running around i know everybody doing a great job in the two and a half years that you've taken over at the helm thank you and a lot of good lot of good word on the street and a lot of good money coming in which more f in two thousand and fifteen has its president and c e o and serving the greater merced county region p a c f promotes philanthropy to advance the wellbeing of communities forever prior to joining the community foundation mr vega served as president of new brunswick tomorrow which was which is not an organization which is established to revitalize the city of new brunswick mr vega serves on the boards of center for not profits lead new jersey the council of new jersey grant makers and the princeton regional chamber a community area foundation and what is the mission of peace yet well let me begin by saying thank you and having me on to talk about the prince and every community foundation i do find that as i engage some individuals in the community they don't know what a community foundation is so i really appreciate the opportunity to share with your viewers about us i had the wonderful fortune of following nancy keeling who was my predecessor as a founding president and worked really to build a very strong community foundation and she decided it was time to spend some time with her wonderful twin grandchildren and and then after a long thoughtful process that the board of trustees conducted i ended up being the lucky recipient of being offered the opportunity to succeed nancy the community foundation our mission is to promote philanthropy for the well being of the community forever and it's a really really powerful and profound mission  there are about seven hundred fifty community foundations nationally and the theory behind a community foundation is wherever there is one established generosity increases and nonprofits are the lucky beneficiary of those dollars in many different causes whether it's basic human needs the arts the environment and so the community foundation started because of a gentleman by the name of stuart carruthers the sided that he was at the time with the recording for the blind influx of now known as learning ally and they decided they needed some more dollars to support their very valuable work in the community so he reached out to other people like jack wallace and  and other wonderful founders who got together and decided that they were going to create a community foundation here in the area so the prince and eric in the foundation was born in one thousand nine hundred one with a desire to promote philanthropy and help wonderful causes the forever peace is really an important word what we need to is we offer vehicles like a donor advice fund we also do scholarships memorial funds and other funds doesn't matter funds and all those dollars get pulled together and we have who are very grateful to have a wonderful investment committee whose mission is to grow those dollars so that we can have more charitable dollars of our time to help and impact causes in the area so when we start it you know our wonderful founders got together and put several thousands of dollars together about thirty i think the numbers ninety seven thousand that comes to mind for my memory and it began to invest and create an investment pool to help grow us now over the course of twenty six years our assets are now one hundred fifty five million dollars as of june thirtieth of this year in our lifetime we've also given out one hundred five million dollars in grants so our mission is  our mission is to raise the dollars and give them out to important causes so today grateful gratefully because of a lot of one the work of a lot of wonderful people and harrod a very strong foundation we're in a very strong position to give out dollars when i came through the door the board of trustees said to me they want to continue that valuable work that has been done but we also need to understand where do we want to head strategically into our future and that was to be able to grow our foundation to make an impact and we make an impact and many different ways one is that we identify through the network people who really want to make an impact through their own philanthropy so they come to us whether we refer to wonderful people like the founders of the network that's out there or their professional advisor that says you have an income event you should go talk to the community foundation for the philanthropy that you want to do and we open up what's called a donor advice fund that's been a lot in the media lately and we use that in the as a tool to be able to help philanthropists do some very thoughtful giving they think of the donor advice fund as a bank account you come to us you open up the bank account you put dollars into it in return what you get is a tax deduction that you use when you file your taxes the money technically belongs to us but you retain the right to advise the fund so in your travels if you if you want to support an environmental cause cause a homeless organization you tell us i want to out of my phone i want to provide a grant for ten thousand dollars to this organization we'll do all the betting of that recommendation we'll look at a nonprofits ninety nine to make sure there are strong and viable nonprofit more often not it's a very good organization if we find a red flag we will circle back to the donor and tell the donor what we found and it's still up to the discretion of the donor if they want to proceed with the gift or if they want to stop it because of the concern that we've raised we have a lot of expertise on staff to be able to counsel generous people on how to do their philanthropy and how to do it i way that makes an impact in the community and so a donor vice fund is a very wise an easy way to do it so right now we have about four hundred donor funds i'm sorry four hundred advi different donors who started out with us as a donor bice fund holder have given us their donor advice fund and said you guys know what you're doing you guys invest the money wisely in the community so about a third of our assets up to a third of our assets belong to us it's our own discretionary dollars and then we use to put money out into the community in the form of grants we have a grant making program that is in two types that were in the process of rolling out one is called the response of grant  making program which is called we call it the community impact grants which we're right now in the midst of accepting applications so if any of your viewers are interested in submitting a grant application to us they can go on our website look at the grant guidelines and if they qualify they can contact us and submit a grant application online the deadline is september eleven four thirty after four thirty one we don't accept anymore and that's for next year it's we will accept that this year and then the awards will be announced in mid december for that particular part of dollars we are also in the midst of reshaping some of our credit making from a responsive to a more strategic grant making what does that mean it means that we get to s very strict criteria on how we want those dollars invested in our own strategic planning process our board of trustees identified the area of children adolescent ages are twenty five living in poverty in the greater mercer county area and that's the area that we want to make an impact we're not going to be able to move the needle sufficiently where we want it to be by yourselves so part of the strategy is not only grant making it's going to be acting as a com bringing partners to the table to see what other tools other partners have that we can use and collaborate to work effectively together to deal with the issue of child poverty we look at different pieces of data one of them is produced by the advocates for children of new jersey and they annually produce a set of data that's called kids count and kids count measures a variety of pieces of data on child wellbeing and poverty and they rank all of the counties in new jersey all twenty one counties in order of how well they're doing and certain variables and four variables on the variable of education unfortunately mercer county ranks nineteen out of twenty one counties was that they different variables for example if you look at the variable of chronic absenteeism exam chronic absenteeism is an important issue we want to make sure all children thrive in the region and we know the strong correlation between education in a meaningful life right so you assume in that relationship that kids have to be in school but if you're absent you're already missing a lot of academic preparation that helps you to be successful so chronic absenteeism is defined as missing ten percent or more of school eighteen days or more of school and so when we look at the data regionally see trenton has well let me start with princeton princeton has fourteen percent of the students chronically absent why we don't i don't have the answer to that we need to do a little deep dive in this area that we're about saying gauge to understand what are the burials in the can be perfectly valid explanations but what can we do to bring some resources to help the district deal with those kind of issues you know a school district to set up to educate and sometimes are social issues that go inside of a school district that they're not set up to deal with that's where the community comes in to wrap ourselves around them and be partners to help come up with solutions community like hamilton has seventeen percent with leaders and trent is that many years ago when trent was taken over by the state they were made to sell their transportation their buses and then they had to engage with vendors that are much more expensive and that some of the transportation is not available to them some of their kids if they live within a certain miles of the school have to walk to school well sums sums kids have reported in families have reported that some of their kids have to walk to neighborhoods where they don't feel safe so if you have to make a choice to go to school or stay home and be safe you may choose the latter much to the detriment of the education of that child but as a parent i have an eight year old i want to keep that my son's safe so so there are issues there that they're very complex but i'm confident that if we bring the community together bring some resources to the table we can come up with some affective solutions with our nonprofit community so that's what we're in the process of developing and we're going to release an r f p and again i'll say it again that what we're doing is developing our own tools to make a difference but we need to work in partnership so if there are private family foundation that want to come and join us in our mission we invite them we have some already at the table they don't have to have a donor a vice fund we would love them to but they don't have to they can keep their own funding separately but coe fund with us on important projects that help to help children thrive  those are the kinds of projects we're working on that are very significant you have a lot of left with who who work with you on there is projects and how or how do they know or how can they make sure that the organizations that they care about you know being properly funded you know with money that they're given the p c s well part of it is the due diligence the due diligence that we do on every single grant that we make last year we made sixteen million dollars worth of grants and that is from our own discretionary as well as from our donor vice funds and that translates to about twenty one hundred individual grants that we did out the door so every single grant we do our due diligence we have an expert staff that looks at the user's guide start to look at in the organizations ninety we have relationships with a lot of non profits so we understand the issues that they're experiencing as they're implementing their work  and more often than not there are some organizations that we look to support that are doing some real great work sometimes organizations go through life cycle and they may destabilize they may lose funding the funding environment changes nationally and locally and they go through problems so we are aware of all that and so we advise each donor on what is a good bet with their grants and i'm very lucky to have team back at the office that are out there in the community and know the the good work so many organizations that are out there in the in the current economic climate right now have you seen an increase in philanthropy as far as you know money's th absolutely there are a lot of generous donors that want to continue to ensure that many children and the arts and the environment continue to thrive so we've seen an increase of grant making i'll tell you when i first joined the community foundation the year i joined we made ten million dollars worth of grants in the last two years we've made sixteen million dollars a grant each year or so it is increasing a lot of our philanthropists are using their donor bodies fun to make a difference that's great and i know you have a lot of unique it's a tool that we use to communicate but every time i meet with nonprofits i tell them that the annual report will take on a different meaning for them than any other and not nonprofit or any other annual report that they'll see because everybody does individuals who are the very generous and vigils who live in our community so you can look at them begin to network from their we do not match make hard toners with our nonprofits we protect their privacy you know more often not our donors are coming to us and saying i really want to invest in an education initiative in that case we will take the donor to see some educational initiatives in the community one of my favorite stories happened last december where i went to a school in trenton the gregory school the principal took some time to guide me through the schools and i met a wonderful teacher who was teaching coding i don't know what that is but these fourth graders who are technology they know what coding means and the teacher knew what it meant but they were attentive and then during one moment that i had a chance to talk with the teacher i said what's what's on your wish list and she said well these kids are rated to have an robotics program and i said how much does that cost and she was about five thousand dollars and so i left the school i came back to my team and i said this is what's going on we've got to help this one teacher and so just so happens that my vice president for development had a conversation with one of our donors who called in and wanted to do a gift of five thousand dollars and education well you can see where this is going we tied the dough her to the school and in and this family foundation gave through our donor vice fund give a five thousand country dollars contribution and the teachers make in teaching robotics to this eager class of fourth graders very nice so so we do  and we are trying to do big impact full work like i described before so when you when you look at your overall mission it always segues to the concept of the vision so we talked about where we are up to this point now where do you see it in your board member c p a c f going in the years to come i mean there are certain things you like to see in the next two years you know long term or certain things that we can talk about and then the get other people on board so that they are helping you achieve the goals that you're setting up you know part of our vision is to make sure that we're not a well kept secret and making sure that the next generation a philanthropists that are right here  understand that we are a powerful vehicle to work through to make their giving very powerful and impactful in the community so my goal is to go to a different place in the community and for people already to know who we are and  for people to say what's a community foundation so because the more we're known the more people can use us and the more we can make an impact on issues that people care about so our vision is really to continue to promote philanthropy grow our assets and grow  impact in the communities and the can in helping non profits a variety of nonprofits make an impact on the work that they're very important work they're doing in the community have you had a can you give an example  someone who may have come into your office and know you're over in lawrence though i know a lot of times people come in or just donate anonymously and because they've seen something or been impressed by something and they want to be part of it want to see continue can you g example one of my favorite stories to tell is someone who came to us her husband had passed away and he was the one that did all the philanthropy in the family her  professional advisor said go to the community foundation they'll take care of you myself and another colleague of mine we sat down with her we listen to what's important to her and she said i don't do philanthropy i didn't do  husband did it all and so we started with her we said what's important to you and she said i love to garden ok so let's start there that's it and that evolved into a conversation with there's a project in trenton next to the trenton area soup kitchen task where those a piece of land right next and that had tires and litter and the d n r greenway and i believe through in partnership with dials came in cleaned up the land took all of the  is the lead on that project there and others and his and his staff walked through walk through the land sat down and spoke about the vision of this piece of land we walked away and she was so impressed that she directed us to give this project a gran twenty five thousand dollars to support it very well and that helped them to go a long way to continue to develop that project so from the idea of what's important to you to looking at what's in the community and how we can match it within causes that you care  that's what we do best so for people watching tonight and they want to get involved in many different ways you can get involved with the a c f and we talked about the various ways not just the monetary ways that people can get involved for anybody is watching sign up for a social media and keep tabs of all the great work that we're doing we have a lot of wonderful volunteers that help to guide our work we have a lot of wonderful committees that people sit on and help to guide us we use volunteers and professional advisors and all of us to network and keep us in contact with generous donors and people who are in the community working to make a difference in causes so nonprofits so there's a lot of ways that people can engage with us so donors and our nonprofits are philanthropic some are so you can go on our website and see the long list of seminars that are coming we have a seminar tomorrow coming up for nonprofits on how to start an endowment and many nonprofits are looking to create an has to support themselves all nonprofits are looking for sustainability to support their important work so tomorrow we actually have a seminar at the mercer county community college conference center i believe it's at four o'clock but you can contact us and if you're hearing it for the first time today and tomorrow so but we have a long list of seminars for our nonprofits on a variety of topics that are important to them from fund raising to communications to strategic planning and other topics that help help them perform better and then again i just want to emphasize our work in the community with our grant making will be rolling out a request for proposal around october early october on how to  work to deal with a lot of these issues that we talked about to make sure that children can thrive in our community very i want to applaud you for the work that you're doing and getting the word out and hopefully we for anybody watching tonight hopefully that you'll make note of that and take a visit over to see the press near a community foundation it's fifteen princess road in lawrenceville and if you can't do that just contact the person erika new foundation check their website at p a c f dot org and geoffrey vega thank you very much for coming on the show and i for having me on thank you so much and she learned a lot about the show and hopefully a thriving philanthropy in the thriving community as well will continue many many years down the road and hopefully we'll be having a great stories and hopefully if you have an urge to give money to nicely or not so enough lee i'm sure jeffrey would welcome the conversation with you and just think of the legacy that you provide for individuals and