Little Money
Charitable Family Health Foundations – How to Start One With Little Money
When I was growing up in the hills of my birth country, television stations were very limited, and the only reliable option was public television. We could see Masterpiece Theater, Sesame Street, cartoons, The Adventures of Sherlock Homes, and occasionally an interesting documentary. I took all of these programs for granted, assuming that some magic money tree funded them. Only as an adult, understanding the way programs are made, did I realize the programs are often paid for by private and public foundations.
Basically, a foundation is an organization which identifies deficiencies in the community and tries to use its resources to rectify the problems. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is well-known, and here in our state we often hear about the Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation which has made health care possible for many people who would otherwise not receive it if the programs depended solely on public funding. The United Way, another extremely beneficial organization, would hardly be able to maintain its wonderful work without such foundations. As grand as these foundations are, however, they don’t meet every need in our community.
One difficulty foundations face is in their creation. Starting a foundation requires answers to questions such as how much money will be available, how to get that money, how the money will be allocated to needy projects, and how the foundation will deal with its own tax issues. Just considering these questions will scare away many potential founders, regardless of their financial affluence. Fortunately there are foundations with the purpose of helping create foundations; they help take care of the woes that face foundations in the early stages of upstart. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Charitable, family, foundation, individual, Little Money