The Summit Foundation

 

Today’s speaker was Dana Turk, President of the board of trustees of the Summit Foundation (TSF).

Dana gave an overview of the Foundation.  It was created in 1972 by a group of local residents and progressed slowly.  In its first decade it made grants of roughly $37,000.  However, it continued to attract donors, merged with another 501c3 in the 1980s and by 1992, has assets of about one million dollars.  Fast forward to today, and TSF has assets of twenty-one million dollars and distributed grants of more than ten million dollars over the past decade.

TSF manages donor directed endowments as well as an unrestricted pool of money.  TSF has assisted dozens of not-for-profit organizations in Summit and the surrounding areas of Union county.  Grants have been made to the Y, the Connection, Visual Art Center, the Parkline, Overlook Hospital, Hometown Heros, the Reeves-Reed Arboretum, Summit Speech School, Community Food Bank, Bridges, Grace, SAGE, the new fire house, and many, many more.  In addition, they give roughly a hundred and fifty thousand dollars yearly in scholarships, primarily through donor directed endowments.

The Foundation employs a bookkeeper and pays a low management fee to an outside professional fund manager and all the other work is done by the trustees, at no cost to the Foundation.  Approximately ninety cents of every dollar collected goes to their grant and scholarship recipients.

TSF is also in an excellent position to help the community in times of crisis.  During COVID, TSF was in the lead in raising funds to assist our local merchants survive the near cessation of commercial activity in the downtown area.  Many survived because of this initiative.

For those interested in learning more about TSF, here are two excellent resources, the website: www.summitforever.org/, and a recently made Hometown TV video about TSF: www.youtube.com/watch?v=R07NknV3fQ8 .