The Greater Taylor Foundation has officially launched.
Hosted by the Taylor Chamber of Commerce, GTF kicked off its foundation with a ribbon cutting ceremony at the Taylor Mansion on Monday, June 26. The foundation’s goal is to connect donors with causes that they care about.
“We’re a communitybased organization,” Board Chair Diana Phillips said. “It’s all about connecting the community together around the issues that are really important.”
According to the charity’s website, GTF was founded in 2022 on the belief that Taylor can do more to preserve the quality of life that the city has today by pooling resources together.
GTF offers six types of funds – donor advised, donor designated, scholarship, field of interest, unrestricted and agency endowments.
In donor advised funds, the foundation staff works directly with the donor to identify charitable needs that might interest them.
Donor designated funds allow for the donor to support one specific organization with an endowment fund. Field of interest funds work similarly, but have donors target an area of interest rather than a single nonprofit.
Unrestricted funds go directly to the Greater Taylor Foundation for the organization to identify and target needs in the Taylor area. Agency endowments can be established to support a charity in perpetuity.
“For donors, there’s a significant advantage of going through the foundation because we can help them to develop a tax effective and efficient strategy when they’re making a donation,” Phillips said. “They are giving their money to help the community, rather than paying it all out to the IRS.”
At last week’s ribbon cutting ceremony, the foundation received its first significant donation. Ed Komandosky, who is a member of GTF’s Board of Directors, announced a $1 million donation to the foundation.
The money comes directly from the John Wehby Estate. Before his death in 2018, Wehby left Komandosky as the administer of his estate.
The donation establishes the John Wehby/ Ed Komandosky Foundation, which will be under the GTF umbrella.
“I support community foundations such as the Greater Taylor Foundation because they offer unique opportunities to invest in the future of the community and its citizens,” Komandosky said on the foundation’s website.
GTF also formally announced its Impact Taylor at the event. Impact Taylor is a GTF initiative that seeks to identify Taylor’s needs and try to improve them.
The first step of Impact Taylor is to identify what the community feels are Taylor’s biggest areas that require improvement through focus groups, stakeholder interviews and one-on-one talks with Taylor residents. Phillips said over 35 participated in the first focus group held at the Taylor Public Library.
The initiative will conduct four more focus groups in July. The results will ultimately compile into a report that the foundation will use to target the charity’s resources.
“We’ll start looking at connecting the gaps,” Phillips said. “We will come up with a plan with how we can address the top needs and then hopefully raise the money and push out grants to the different nonprofits in the community.”
