Disaster philanthropy: Your clients and the role of individual philanthropy

Sadly, your philanthropic clients have likely grown accustomed to making charitable donations to support disaster relief. Individual donations provide critical resources to help communities recover from the many disasters – wildfire, weather humanitarian, disease, war – that occur each year. 

In the wake of recent disasters in neighboring areas and across the globe, your clients may ask you about their options to support those affected. We encourage you to reach out to us. We can connect your donors with a variety of options for giving that are trustworthy and effective. Indeed, disaster relief funding is frequently coordinated by community foundations, which are widely viewed as one of the very best vehicles to help donors provide financial support to relief efforts. Individual giving is critically important to any disaster relief effort, and the community foundation can help your clients make an immediate, powerful, and positive impact on the lives of those affected by disasters. 

Especially heartwarming is that many donors are now exploring ways to help improve our community’s readiness for disaster response, including building reserve funds for future disaster relief and bolstering emergency preparedness infrastructure for medical care, food, clothing, and shelter delivered by a network of local, on-the-ground nonprofit organizations. We are happy to work with your clients to establish Field of Interest Funds or unrestricted funds at the Foundation to ensure that the people in our region remain as safe and supported as possible when disaster strikes. These types of funds can be especially attractive because they are qualified recipients of QCDs (Qualified Charitable Distributions) from clients’ IRAs.

Learn more about Field of Interest Funds

We also invite you to learn more about the Foundation’s Sacramento Region Disaster Relief Fund. You and your clients can give to this fund at any time, knowing that when emergencies strike, this fund allows the Foundation to be equipped to respond. We look forward to helping your clients improve the lives of those affected by disasters both here in our community, across the nation, and the world.