Individuals and Families

Connect Your Passion with Purpose

We Maximize Your Giving - The GCF Advantage

Since 1963, Greater Cincinnati Foundation has served as our region's leading community foundation, offering personalized  service to help donors like you make the wisest possible charitable investments to improve our region. 

We offer a variety of giving tools to help individuals and families achieve their charitable goals with three specific advantages.

Your generosity inspires our team and we are excited to help guide you on your charitable journey.

We want to be your partner and help ensure you reach your charitable goals. You are passionate about giving back. Simply by having a fund with us - you are fueling our community leadership and strategic mission to create a more racially equitable region where we all thrive. 

Connect

Colleen McCarthy Blair, EMPA, CAP®

Vice President, Philanthropy

513-241-2880

colleen.blair@gcfdn.org

Only at GCF

Your Giving Connection

As a partner, you’ll have access to our Giving Connection platform. Through this interactive, online portal, you can view and manage your fund, make grant suggestions and find ways to connect with your community. In the funding opportunities section, you’ll learn more about local nonprofits and how to support their work. 

Fund Login

A Special Gift: Collection of Wishes

We continuously lift up meaningful ways to give back. This program highlights specific, essential items that locals organizations need to help the people they serve. From computers so low-income families can virtually connect to secure locker storage for those staying at homeless shelters, your gifts provide tangible, much-needed support. We will publish a new book each year. 

Emergency Needs

We are uniquely positioned to understand the region’s greatest needs. We can connect you to organizations providing these critical services. While those needs are always important and timely, there are also events which require an immediate response. Your gift can make a difference for individuals in crisis or when disasters strike.

Family Philanthropy

Engaging your family in conversations about giving back and your philanthropic goals can be powerful. We can help facilitate those conversations and provide tools to identify values and a vision for your giving. Family philanthropy can strengthen bonds between family members and inspire generosity for generations.

Learn More

Social Impact Investing

Join a group of donors who invest in local projects that make our community more vibrant and equitable. Through Impact Investing, you can loan charitable funds to organizations for a specific social benefit; then have those funds repaid to your donor advised fund after a term, with interest.

Learn More

Exploring Tax Saving Strategies

Our Philanthropic Advisors are here to help you explore tax wise strategies to amplify your giving power.

Learn More

How You Get Started

4 Steps to Your Charitable Giving

1. Identify Your Assets You Want To Give

Consider what you would like to utilize now or after your lifetime to open your fund. We are very flexible and will guide you though your options. We accept a wide variety of charitable contributions. In addition to cash, we accept:

  • Cash
  • Securities
  • IRA
  • Private Company Stock
    • S-Corp
    • C-Corp
    • Restricted Stock
    • Other Privately Held Assets
    • Pre-IPO Shares
  • Publicly traded stock
  • Mutual Funds and Bonds
  • Real Estate - including complete or partial interest in residential real estate, undeveloped land, commercial real estate
  • Life Insurance
  • Collectibles
  • LLC & Limited Partnership
  • Intangible and/or intellectual property
  • Private equity interests
  • Tangible property
  • Private Foundation
  • Charitable Trust
  • Alternative Investments
  • Miscellaneous Capital Assets
  • Trust Assets
  • Non-Earning Asset
2. Establish A Fund

Steps to Establishing a Fund:

Create a Fund Agreement: 

  • Name the fund 
  • Decide how it is going to be invested
  • Create a succession plan

Transfer your charitable assets into your fund.

Call our Philanthropic Advisors to guide you through setting up a fund.

3. Meet Your Advisor

We make it personalized and easy - make connections, etc. understand goals, interests, etc.

We get to know you so we can help make giving easy for you. 

Get online access.

Make grant for you ... if you have question

Connect with others in community 

Welcome meeting

Access to Giving Connection

Consult you on your giving options

Your dedicated resource in lifetime of giving

4. Make A Grant

We will explain your giving options and connect you to nonprofits and organizations that align with your passions. A few ways to give include:

  • Independent Grantmaking: Identify a nonprofit you would like to support and we'll direct your grant to support their work. 
  • Impact Investing: Loan charitable funds to organizations addressing our region's most pressing needs. 
  • Generous Together: Explore GCF's initiatives and co-invest with us to amplify our efforts to create a region that thrives.
  • Giving Circles: Join other like-minded individuals and collectively pool resources and together decide which nonprofits to support.
My wife and I make grants to our favorite nonprofits locally and nationally from our donor advised fund at GCF. The bonus is that the fund's fees support all the great work GCF is doing in our community. It's a win-win that makes us feel twice as good about charitable giving. - Dave Foster