About the Athens Area Foundation

A strong community must have civic engagement, a vibrant regional economy, a nimble workforce, effective schools, affordable housing, accessible healthcare, efficient public transportation, supportive services for the most vulnerable, strong cultural amenities, and environmental sustainability.

With the creation of the Athens Area Community Foundation, we now have a public philanthropic organization dedicated to supporting our thriving, just, and caring community. As the local center for philanthropy, the Athens Area Community Foundation connects individuals, families, corporations, and private foundations in the Athens area to the critical issues facing our community. We advance sustainable solutions through collaboration with civic and charitable organizations.

Understanding the needs of our community is the core value on which the Athens Area Community Foundation is founded. The Athens area has incredible assets. We have universities and colleges including the University of Georgia. We have over 150 nonprofit agencies that serve community needs. We are rich in music and arts. And, we have economic and philanthropic investment through the business community, the government, private family foundations, the United Way, and individual donors. But, we are also home to great contrasts. Athens-Clarke County was identified as one of the Georgia’s 91 persistently poor counties. In Athens, 1 in 3 children under the age of 17 lives in poverty. 19% of Athenians do not have health insurance and more than 30% of households are cost-overburdened or inadequate in Athens.

Through the Partners for a Prosperous Athens process, thousands of Athenians came together to identify the underlying causes of poverty and to develop sustainable solutions for this community. Identified as a critical need through PPA’s two year community assessment, the Athens Area Community Foundation is uniquely positioned to provide leadership and resources that will build economic vibrancy and improve the quality of life for the Athens and its surrounding counties for generations to come.

Mission

The Athens Area Community Foundation, Inc. is a public charity that brings people together who care deeply about Athens, Georgia and surrounding areas and who seek to improve the quality of life and economic well-being of all people in our community through gifts and involvement.

We are committed to connecting donors with what they care about through charitable giving and by serving as a well-informed and effective grant-maker working in partnership with the community and encouraging the entire community to support charitable giving for the benefit of all.

The Foundation fulfills its mission by:

• Supporting implementation of the recommendations of the Partners for a Prosperous Athens;
• Encouraging private giving for the public good;
• Providing a flexible and cost effective vehicle for donors with varied charitable interests and abilities to give;
• Helping to enhance the capacity of service delivery providers in the greater Athens area;
• Serving as a catalyst, convener and partner in reaching and shaping effective responses to problems and opportunities of all our communities.

What is a Community Foundation?

Just what is a community foundation? It's a tax-exempt public charity created by and for the people in a local area. A community foundation enables people with philanthropic interests to easily and effectively support the issues they care about - immediately, or through their will. Donors can establish a charitable fund at the foundation by contributing a variety of assets and may also recommend grants - in their name, if they choose - to nonprofit groups they want to support.

Funds at a community foundation, most of which are endowed, are pooled for the long-term benefit of the community. A common analogy is that a community foundation functions as a community's "collective savings account." The economy of scale offered by a pooled body of funds helps maximize investment returns while keeping costs low.

Community foundations are the nation's fastest-growing form of philanthropy, largely because they make good sense. The first was founded in Cleveland in 1914, and today there are more than 700 community foundations across the country, collectively holding more than $45 billion in permanent charitable funds.

For donors, community foundations make charitable giving easy, flexible and effective by connecting their interests and priorities to the needs of the community. They offer an excellent way for people to participate in the "big pictures" in their community - efforts that will truly make a difference for this generation and those to come.