Donor Circles

[Caryl Turnow]

Central Minnesota Community Foundation introduced its first donor circle opportunity at our annual dinner.   The goal is to engage donors around community needs that will have a significant impact on the community.  We decided on 3 options to choose from, two of them based on grant applications received from our annual Difference Maker grant round held last spring. The third was an option to help us grown our pool for next year’s grant round.

We expect that this will take some years to grow our Donor’s Circle but are pleased to have 4 donors who have committed dollars to the program.   Our promise to these donors is that they will hear from the nonprofit about the impact that their gift has made on both the nonprofit’s program and on the community at large.

As we look to next year, we would like the participants to make recommendations of the area of focus or nonprofits they would like to focus on for 2020.

Have you had experience with Donor’s Circles?  What did you do to engage the donors?  How did your program differ or build on what we are doing?

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