Greater Kansas City Community Foundation

What's hot?

Things are sizzling in Kansas City, and we don’t just mean the weather! Your team at the Community Foundation is gearing up for the fall release of an update to the “Time to Get It Right” report, and we’re hot on the trail of a handful of initiatives that are making a real difference. Consider, for example, the Institute for Pediatric Innovation, on the cutting edge of drug and device development for kids, right here in Kansas City. And the Institute for Urban Education at UMKC, whose graduates are paving the way for the future of our inner city children. The Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation continues to make progress at UMKC, and when it comes to collaboration, there are few better examples than Back in the Swing and the Center for Nutrition and Weight Management.

Want to learn more about these and other initiatives? Stay tuned . . . and stay cool!

Elephants in the room

Summer is here and the fun has begun in a big way! Last weekend, Ann and Clay camped out at the Kansas City Zoo, among the seals, elephants, and chimpanzees (well, sort of). While Ann and her pals dined on s'mores, your friends at the Community Foundation were enjoying plenty of food for thought at the DonorEdge 2.0 Conference in Columbus, Ohio, in the company of national experts like Lucy Bernholz, Doug Kridler, Brent Christopher, and Bob Ottenhoff. DonorEdge, an initiative invented right here in Kansas City, allows you and other donors to see the impact of your grants through the Nonprofit Search on the Community Foundation's Web site, www.gkccf.org. DonorEdge also brings you innovative tools to help you with your giving, like the Charitable Investment Review and the Charitable Investment Planner. Organizing your giving has never been more important, and the experts are noticing! Check out Sean Stannard-Stockton's recent post in Tactical Philanthropy: http://tacticalphilanthropy.com/2009/06/two-elephants-in-the-philanthropic-room.

Yes, it is true that giving away money is hard work. But when it comes to smart giving, your Community Foundation can help. It doesn't have to be a jungle out there.

Sunny days ahead

The bright days of spring and summer are here! Aurora is finished with classes at KU for the semester, Cristal graduated from high school on Sunday, Ann’s softball season has started up, Lindy’s hair is getting blonder . . . and the littlest girl is waking up earlier. Dawn is announced by the pounding of little feet running down the stairs at top two-year-old speed. Eva bursts through the door and announces “I’m awake!”

Here’s to earlier sunrises! With so much potential to help people give to the causes they care about, the team at the Community Foundation could use a few more sun-filled hours in the day! Indeed, 72% of households in Kansas City give to charity each year, compared with 70% nationally, totaling $2.15 billion in giving in the Kansas City area in 2007. And Kansas Citians’ generosity is on the upswing, according to a soon-to-be-released report. Next month, Dr. Patrick Rooney will announce the complete results of the Giving in Kansas City study conducted by the experts at the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University. Mark your calendars for a July 9, 2009 community presentation by Dr. Rooney at 9:00 at the Kauffman Foundation. It is sure to be worth waking up for!

You CAN make a difference!

"This was the best day of my life." That's what Ann said a couple of Saturdays ago after we spent an afternoon volunteering at Harvesters Community Food Network packaging food for the BackSnack program. It just proves that doing good can be lots of fun and that there really is nothing more rewarding than helping people in need. And this goes for adults as well as children. The staff at the Community Foundation had a great time during its community service project at Harvesters. How inspiring it is to see people of all races, ages and across the entire region invest their time, talent and treasure to make Kansas City a better place. Click here to learn more about how Community Foundation donors like you are giving back to support emergency assistance needs. Whether it's $25, $250, $25,000 or $25 million, every gift makes a difference.

I'm beginning to see a pattern here...

At the Community Foundation, we help donors organize their giving so that every gift to charity is as satisfying to the donor as it is to the nonprofit recipient. A new tool called the Charitable Investment Review provides a donor with a history of the donor's giving conducted through his or her personal, family, or corporate foundation fund. The results are sometimes surprising. ("I had no idea that I gave so much to XYZ cause when I really care most about ABC cause.") And often the results are a reassuring confirmation to the donor that charitable objectives are being met. ("I am so glad to see that the dollars I've invested in ABC cause over the last ten years have had such a tremendous impact.") Always, a pattern emerges that helps the donor plan future gifts to charity.

There is a rather unfortunate pattern taking shape at our house. A few weeks ago I reported that a gummy worm "somehow" got lodged on the ceiling. The sticky animal tricks have escalated. "Mommy, come quick, something's yucky!" Lindy tugged at my shirt to coax me out of the kitchen. "In a minute, honey." Fifteen minutes later, Clay bounded down the stairs spouting expletives and dove for the light switch in the front hall. I ran over to see what all the commotion was about and I was greeted by a nasty plume of rubbery-smelling smoke. "WHO THREW THE SQUISHY DINOSAUR INTO THE CHANDELIER???"

First worms, now reptiles. What will three little girls toss up into the air next?

Make all the birthdays HAPPY ones

When we created the Giving Card at the Greater Kansas City Community Foundation, I had no idea that it would be the cure for the birthday party panic attack. That's right, the birthday party panic attack. You know, the feeling you get when you look at the calendar at 1:50 on a Saturday afternoon and realize that you've got to get the five-year-old to a birthday party across town in ten minutes flat and you have no gift. What to do? Rummage around in the wrapping paper closet hoping to find a stray stocking stuffer buried somewhere among the scraps? Raid your kids' closets for the least-used looking toy? Search the bookshelf for something the kids have never read? We've all been there.

Enter the Giving Card, available exclusively through the Community Foundation. (Click the image to check out more new designs, launched today!) I work here, so it is easy for me to stock up, but you can, too, without even leaving your house because it's all online. The way it works is simple. You order Giving Cards, available in denominations of $25, 50, or $100, on the Community Foundation's Web site. (The total purchase price is a charitable tax deduction for you!) You receive the cards in the mail. You or your kids give the cards as gifts, and the recipient gets to go online to choose a charity anywhere in the country to receive the face amount of the card. Kids love it! And the parents of the birthday boy or girl appreciate the opportunity for a teaching moment about the importance of giving back. It's also a chance for the child to learn about different charities online and make a choice about where to give the money. Giving the gift of giving in such a tangible way has taught my eight-year-old and five-year-old some very good lessons, and I'm going to get the two-year-old started just as soon as I can. I must confess, though, that they still say "Mommy, let's give the Giving Card AND a Webkinz."

Stick to values

The most important of the Community Foundation's four core values is integrity. That means we conduct our work honestly and transparently, holding ourselves accountable to our commitments and for our words and actions. Nothing, we believe, is more critical to increasing charitable giving for our region and empowering donors to engage in the causes that are most important to them.

It's always nice when the best qualities of a corporate culture somehow rub off at home. When I walked into Ann's and Lindy's room last Wednesday night to tuck them into bed, I nearly tripped over a suspicious pile of pillows and chairs in the middle of the floor. "What's all this?" I asked. "Oh we were just playing," they said. I kissed them goodnight. As I made my way to the bedroom door, Ann stopped me and said "Mom, wait. I am going to tell you the absolute truth." It came out in one long sentence, as if she couldn't say it fast enough: "We were playing a game with the sticky worm I got from the dentist and throwing the worm into the air and trying to catch it and playing baseball with the worm and somehow on accident the worm got stuck up on the ceiling and we tried to get it down but we couldn't and so we built a tower to try to climb up and get it but we still couldn't reach it and we are so sorry and now the worm is stuck up on the ceiling, right there." Sure enough, dangling from the ceiling three feet above my head was a gummy, yellow worm.

Lesson learned for the Barker girls: Be honest about your mistakes; they don't get any less sticky.

There's no place like home

Lindy and Eva have watched the Wizard of Oz at least 70 times and they aren't tired of it yet (unfortunately). What is it about the movie that is so enticing to a five-year-old and a two-year-old? Is it the flying monkeys? Munchkins? The tornado? The "lizard" himself?

Maybe it's the idea that no matter how far you travel, there's really no place like home. That certainly was my theory during a spring break vacation spent right here in Kansas City entertaining three little girls. There is so much to do in this wonderful community of ours, and there was much to do at home, like cleaning out the basement and donating used clothing to the Community Services League (which picks up curbside!). 

In all the spring break fun, I made sure to remind the girls that our community is home to some wonderful people who unfortunately are struggling in these difficult financial times. We made a point during the week to set aside donations to help meet the basic needs of those who could use a helping hand. At the Community Foundation, we continue to be inspired by the hundreds of caring donors across our region who are reaching out to help their neighbors with food, clothing, and shelter through a community-wide, coordinated effort.

Oh, and in the spirit of the Wizard of Oz, the highlight of the week was a visit to the Kansas Sampler store. It was smooth sailing until someone couldn't resist opening a container of chocolate covered sunflower seeds. The clean up was a photo op!

Hometown Heroes

So often our children ask us things we can't answer (or don't want to answer), but yesterday Ann raised a question that, happily, has many answers. "Do you have any heroes?" she said. "Lots!" I responded proudly. We see heroes every day at the Community Foundation, where Kansas Citians are living up to their reputation for generosity in the face of economic challenges.

Take the George K. Baum Family Foundation and the Mutual Fund Store Foundation, for instance, who are working in collaboration with Community Foundation experts and nonprofit organization caseworkers to provide necessary funds to individuals and families in critical need. And consider two of our donors who established a new fund called the MAACLink Access Fund. MAACLink is a shared database used by nearly all emergency assistance providers in the metropolitan area to promote efficiency and reduce duplication of services. Of course, the accolades are still pouring in for Payless ShoeSource, which in December awarded $1 million in gift coupons to more than 600 social service organizations across the country. The gift coupons meant that tens of thousands of children had new shoes for the cold winter season.

Indeed, the Community Foundation is working harder than ever to increase giving in our region so that as many donors as possible can connect with the causes that are most important to them. Whether your gift to the cause you care about is $25, $2,500, $25,000, or $25 million, you are a hero, too!

Check it out

I try to remember to check the calendar every night as I get the kids' school things ready for the next day. Too many times I have failed to do so and missed important events like picture day, the deadline for bringing in empty milk cartons for the science project, or snack week at preschool.

Lately I've also been in the good habit of checking my charitable giving. Our family organizes its generosity through the very modest Laura McKnight and Clay Barker Fund at the Community Foundation. By logging in online through My Fund at www.gkccf.org, I can check the fund's asset balance (whether we've chosen to invest the fund in cash, fixed income, equities or any combination of the three). I can also check to see when we last made a contribution to the fund, which is quite handy for income tax purposes. Of course, Clay and I can also check out our favorite charities' online profiles on a special Nonprofit Search version of GuideStar linked to www.gkccf.org. And of course, through the My Fund function, I can check to see when we last made a grant to our church or to one of our other favorite causes in Kansas City and beyond.

So, with all that good checking going on at the Community Foundation, it was no surprise when Brenda Chumley, Jan Kauk, and I showed up to work on Friday in our matching jackets. Check it out!