...mysterious symbiosis...

(The following remarks were offered earlier this month as an introduction to NCCF’s first webinar)

NCCF was incorporated in Delaware over twenty years ago and was co-founded by the Raskob Foundation and twenty other groups consisting of religious Orders and organizations. It was inspired by NCCF’s president who recognized the benefits of linking Catholic philanthropy with the then relatively little-known community foundation model, and to do so on a national level. NCCF considers its community to include not just local entities but also national ones, that is with individual donors and receiving organizations around the country and under circumstances around the world.  Significantly we are independent of any diocese and are administered by a board of committed lay Catholic men and women.

Our mission is to provide donors the philanthropic vehicles to support charitable, religious, cultural and educational activities in a manner that is effective, lasting and reflective of the human dignity proclaimed in the Gospel and affirmed by the Roman Catholic Church in the Second Vatican Council.

For us philanthropy is a ministry, a ministry in which donors and recipient organizations share as equal players in the edifying dignity of advancing God’s kingdom. Because any gesture on the part of one person that recognizes and promotes the dignity of another person is a reflection of the Gospel, the trustees of NCCF have a generous understanding of what makes philanthropy Catholic. Some of you may be old enough to remember when nothing was Catholic unless it was. We contend that everything is Catholic unless it isn’t. Consequently, we honor any distribution requests from donors where the receiving charities are legally established and not involved in activities that contravene the teachings of the Church.

While NCCF serves the Church generally, we address two constituencies specifically. The first are individual donors and their families; the second are charitable organizations.  The principal means we promote for these purposes are donor advised funds and charitable gift annuities. Today’s webinar will demonstrate how these services are rendered and how they benefit both the donors and the charitable organizations. It will also explore the implications of ‘Catholic’ investing.

The benefits to charitable organizations will be clear. Less clear will be the invaluable blessing donor advised funds bring to families where parents and children participate collectively in the ongoing decisions concerning where and how distributions from their family fund are made. Among other benefits it is an effective way of inculcating values in younger family member especially when these younger members realize that they are party to the decisions.

Fundamental to our mission is our belief that philanthropy is more than a one-way transfer of dollars. No longer the poor immigrant Church of our great-grandparents Catholics today enjoy relatively high levels of affluence and sophistication. Those pre-Vatican II days of ‘pay, pray and obey’ are gone. We, the laity, are called to assume greater responsibility. Philanthropy today, therefore, is or should be a two- way exchange where various ‘gifts’ are shared by equal parties, the giver and the receiver. For donors, in addition to their financial support, these gifts are their creativity, their counsel, their availability and their personal networking. The gifts the receiving organizations offer are the opportunities afforded donors to foster more effectively the spiritual and corporal works of mercy, and to champion more fruitfully the stewardship of the Kingdom.

The giver, the receiver and the Kingdom: when the mutual engagement of these three flourishes great steps forward occur and Catholic philanthropy is at is best. The giver, the receiver and the Kingdom: these three thrive on a mysterious symbiosis – one that is redolent of another Trinity we Christians learn to revere.