Youthbridge Community Foundation
By: David M. Foster, CFP®, CAP®
Hello listeners, and welcome to the 3rd episode of the Gateway Giving Podcast! My guest today is Barbara Carswell, the new CEO of Youthbridge Community Foundation. Youthbridge is different than my previous guests in that they are primarily a middle-man, and I mean that in the most affectionate way possible, for charitable donations, rather than the final destination of those dollars. Community foundations, in general, are organizations that help to facilitate philanthropy by providing a place to park significant funds in order to give the donor time to figure out how to best deploy that capital to make the greatest impact. Youthbridge certainly does that, primarily by offering donor advised funds, however, they also do so much more. Their stated mission is to partner with donors to help charities in the St. Louis region, especially those focused on children, through leadership, grants and donor services. They achieve that mission in numerous ways:
For starters, they award between $2 and $3 million in grants to mostly youth-based organizations, mostly in the St. Louis area every year. In addition, they help local non-profits with endowment building by offering a match on some of the first funds those non-profits bring in to create their endowments. They also run an organization called Youth In Philanthropy, YEP for short, where they get high school kids together for the purpose of determining how best to grant out around $10,000/year. Perhaps what was most interesting to me is what they’re doing with impact investing in the community and their 25X25 Initiative where they have set a goal to have at least 25% of their endowment invested in impact investments, primarily through Community Development Financial Institutions, CDFIs for short, by the year 2025.
There is a whole lot of excellent information packed in here for non-profits and donors alike, and so, with that, I hope you enjoy my interview with Barbara Carswell!
Barbara Carswell and Youthbridge Community Foundation are not affiliated with nor endorsed by LPL Financial, Gateway Wealth Management, or Cornerstone Wealth Management.
Show Notes
- Youthbridge Community Foundation
- About Youthbridge
- What is a Community Foundation?
- Impact Investing
- 2019 Form 990
- 2019 Annual Report
- Financials
- Giving Cards
- Youth In Philanthropy
- Bridgespan Group Grantmaking Pyramid
- What is a community development financial institution?
Hi, I'm David Foster! I am the host of this podcast, and I am also the founder of Gateway Wealth Management, LLC. I hope you found something valuable in what you just heard/read. If you'd like to read more about me, click here. If you'd like to read more about my firm, click here. Thank you for listening!
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