Local knowledge. A whole team behind you.

A conversation at the grocery store. A longtime neighbor thinking about a gift in their will. A nonprofit with a good idea and nowhere obvious to turn.

Community philanthropy often starts in ordinary places, with people who know their hometown and care about what happens next. As an affiliate board member, you’re part of those conversations. You know the organizations doing good work, the projects people are excited about, and the needs that don’t always make the headlines.

The partnership between The Erie Community Foundation and our affiliates in Corry, North East, Union City, and Findley Lake helps you do something with that knowledge. You bring the local relationships and community perspective. We bring a team of people, resources, and systems to help turn a promising conversation into something that lasts.

And you don’t need to have everything figured out before calling.

Start with an idea. We’ll help with the questions.

Perhaps someone wants to support the school they attended. Maybe a family hopes to honor a parent, or a business owner is starting to think about their legacy.

Those are all good places to begin. There’s no need to arrive with a chosen fund type, a completed plan, or a working knowledge of charitable giving terminology. That’s where we can help.

Together, we can listen to what matters to the donor, explore the possibilities, and work through the details. We help prepare for donor meetings, think through the next step in a relationship, explain investments and distributions, and coordinate the agreement and gift.

Sometimes, that conversation opens up an option the donor hadn’t considered. Someone interested in a scholarship, for example, may ultimately be more excited about a designated fund that helps a school district cover Advanced Placement exam fees for many students. The purpose comes first. The fund structure follows.

We also help ask the questions that look further down the road. Who will recommend grants when the original donor is no longer able to? How should the fund continue honoring its purpose as the community changes? Thinking through those questions now helps future leaders carry out the donor’s wishes.

You have a team to call

When a question comes up, our team at ECF is here to help. That might mean joining a donor conversation, finding a useful report, working through a fund question, or connecting you with someone who has specific expertise.

You’re always welcome to start with me, and we’ll bring the right people into the conversation. You don’t have to memorize our staff directory or know which department handles what.

Our database is another resource we can make more useful together. Fund agreements, giving history, grant activity, and contact information help tell the story of your affiliate’s work. For affiliates with individual funds in the system, access to those records provides a way to see current activity and prepare for conversations and decisions.

If a report would make your next board meeting easier, let’s talk about it. If you’d like a walkthrough of what’s available, we’re happy to arrange a Teams call or a visit. A tool is only helpful if you feel comfortable using it.

All we ask is a little lead time whenever possible. We’re still working on the whole psychic-mind-reader-at-warp-speed thing, so an early heads-up helps! Bringing us in early gives us time to gather the right people, think things through with you, and help everything come together.

Making sense of the giving options

Different donors want different kinds of involvement. Some want to name the organizations they’ll support. Others want to remain involved in recommending grants. Still others want to give their community the flexibility to address whatever comes next.

Unrestricted funds provide that flexibility, allowing local leadership to respond as needs and opportunities evolve. Field-of-interest funds preserve a donor’s interest in a broad purpose, such as education or health, while allowing the specific grants to change over time.

Designated funds support named charitable organizations, while donor-advised funds allow donors to recommend grants over time, subject to foundation review and approval. Scholarship funds support students through established criteria, and agency funds help charitable organizations build a long-term financial resource.

The minimum to establish an unrestricted, field-of-interest, designated, or donor-advised fund is $10,000. Scholarship and agency funds begin at $25,000.

Those options give us a starting point for a conversation. We can also help donors understand the difference between an endowed fund intended to provide ongoing support for generations and a non-endowed fund designed to put more of the gift to work sooner. Along the way, we explain applicable fees, investment practices, and how distributions are determined.

Nobody needs to become a fund expert overnight. Bring us the person and the idea, and we’ll work through the possibilities together.

The work between the meetings

There’s quite a bit happening between the moment someone makes a gift and the moment a nonprofit puts a grant to work.

In 2025 alone, ECF processed and distributed 350 outgoing checks from affiliate foundation funds. Behind those payments were records to maintain, details to confirm, and people working to get support where it belonged.

For affiliates with scholarship programs, that support also includes applications, award administration, and payments, with coordination among schools, guidance counselors, students, and families.

Across the four affiliates, 177 funds each carry their own purpose and history. Preparing and maintaining fund agreements helps preserve those intentions and gives future staff and board members clear guidance. Accounting, reconciliations, investment reporting, and support for annual audits and Form 990 filings help keep the financial side of the work moving.

Much of this happens outside the boardroom. Having that support available year-round gives local leaders more room to build relationships, understand community priorities, and make thoughtful decisions.

Your introductions can open doors

Attorneys, accountants, and financial advisors often hear about charitable interests during conversations about a client’s finances, family, or estate plans. Your connection to a local advisor can help bring ECF into that discussion early.

The advisor doesn’t need to know every giving option before reaching out, either. They know their client. We can help with the philanthropy piece.

An introduction over coffee or a simple “Have you talked with the Foundation about that?” can be enough to get things started.

A foundation’s greatest resource is trust

At our Regional Affiliate Summit, Karen Bilowith explored the many roles a community foundation can play: helping donors give, making grants, bringing people together, and helping a community imagine its future.

Those roles depend on trust.

People give because they believe their generosity will be handled thoughtfully. Nonprofits participate because they believe the grant process is fair. Community members look to a foundation because they believe its leaders are listening and taking the long view.

Good governance helps earn that confidence. Clear priorities, financial oversight, transparent board practices, and leadership that reflects the community all help strengthen the work. So does a willingness to keep asking: What does our community need from us? Where can we make the greatest difference? What should we be preparing for now?

Unrestricted support is especially valuable in answering those questions. It gives future leaders the ability to respond to needs that today’s donors and board members may never have imagined.

Different hometowns, plenty to learn from one another

You can see that local leadership taking shape across our affiliates.

In Union City, it’s helping expand trails and recreation opportunities in response to what residents want.

In North East, it’s working toward a permanent foundation home and a hub for local nonprofits on Gibson Street.

In Corry, it’s strengthening grantmaking and long-term planning while making a transformational investment in the downtown Rails + Trails Park.

In Findley Lake, it’s supporting town revitalization while welcoming new donors and building unrestricted resources for the future.

Together, the four affiliates hold nearly $60 million across 177 funds. In 2025, those funds distributed almost $1.3 million in grants. Another 75 nonprofits across the four regions raised more than $940,000 through Erie Gives in 2026.

Behind those numbers are people who believe their communities are worth investing in.

There’s also a great deal we can learn from one another. An idea that worked in one town might help another get started. A challenge one board has already navigated might save another some time. Our affinity fund colleagues bring experience in fundraising, grantmaking, and storytelling that can help spark new approaches, too.

That’s what Inspire, Engage, and Empower looks like in practice. We inspire one another with what’s possible, engage people in shaping their community’s future, and empower local leaders with the support to move forward.

Keep being curious

With a five-year-old at home, I get plenty of reminders that there’s always another question to ask.

Usually several.

There’s something useful in that for all of us. In the middle of busy schedules and full agendas, it helps to slow down, look one level deeper, and ask why. It also helps to remember that someone else may be wondering the very same thing.

For those who would like to keep exploring, here are the books Karen referenced at the summit:

And please keep calling, emailing, and sharing ideas with us and with one another. If there’s a donor you’d like help approaching, a question your board keeps returning to, or something in the database you’d like to understand better, let’s start there.

You give your time, care, and local knowledge to this work. We’re proud to be the team you can call as you carry it forward.

Steve Weiser

VP Philanthropic Services, The Erie Community Foundation

📩 SWeiser@ErieCommunityFoundation.org

📞 814.413.7325