A grant from HCF’s immediate response fund helped support Hamilton’s first Homeless Baseball League. Organizers say the league helps give the players opportunities to be part of a community, and something to look forward to every week. It also provides individuals who are currently homeless the chance to engage with those who are now housed and witness the positive changes that have happened.
Resources
Spectator Giving Supplement 2010
So How Can I Become Involved in Philanthropy?
by Sheree Meredith
“Philanthropy” is a way of making a significant difference in your community – having an impact on issues and organizations you care about. Once thought of as the domain of the very wealthy, today’s philanthropists come from all walks of life, age groups and corners of our city.
Hamilton Community Foundation has worked with donors for almost 60 years to help them make the difference they want to make. By starting a fund at the community foundation or by making a gift to the broader “Community Fund”, individuals, families and corporations have become active philanthropists.
They have learned about important local issues and the strategies that effectively address them and participated in giving grants to all the aspects that make up a vibrant city, including arts, environment, education, health, social services and recreation.
Through their fund at Hamilton Community Foundation, for example, one couple has supported local programs and organizations that, in their words, nourish the “body and soul” of our community. A Hamilton lawyer and his siblings created a fund both to honour their parents and to support literacy– something deeply valued by their parents and key to prosperity in today’s society. Yet another individual who has long supported conservation and the environment recently chose to combine his love of Hamilton’s green spaces with his philanthropy. He is actively championing gifts to build the Hamilton Naturalists’ Club fund at the community foundation to support land stewardship.
These stories are just a few individual examples. Hundreds of people also contribute to the broader Community Fund at HCF each year, supporting the foundation’s work to reduce poverty.
If you decide to start your own fund at the community foundation, you can name it to honour something that has meaning to you, such as your family name, a cause you are passionate about, or in memory of someone you love. A growing number of people are choosing to establish a family fund – often building it over time – and viewing the fund as a vehicle to engage their children in strengthening and celebrating the quality of life we have in Hamilton.
One of the most exciting aspects of this philanthropy is the range of options available through the community foundation. Foundation staff can work with each individual, family or corporation to determine the approach that best matches your philanthropic and financial objectives.
Through philanthropy, you can make a significant difference. Equally important, however, is the difference that philanthropy can make for you. Donors talk about their philanthropy through the community foundation as having been one of the most meaningful and satisfying things they have done in their lives.
Not surprising that the word “philanthropy”, in fact, means “love of humankind”.
Sheree Meredith is Vice-President of Philanthropic Services at Hamilton Community Foundation. For more information visit www.hcf.on.ca