Community Foundations Editing and Proofreading Services

In 1998 a donor established a $500,000 fund with a community foundation to support music education in her county, naming one youth orchestra as the recipient. She died in 2011, and the orchestra folded in 2019 when the school district that housed it withdrew. The fund is now worth $900,000, everyone who met the donor has left the staff, and the agreement says only that the foundation will work in partnership to honor her wishes. Those words do not tell the current board who may recommend a grant, or where the money should go.

The documents we edit for Community Foundations

Donor-advised fund agreements, fund establishment documents, and field-of-interest and designated fund terms outlive the people who sign them. Donor guidance on how a fund operates, grant guidelines and application material, and award and decline correspondence are read years after they are written, and every one of them passes through us. It also covers community needs assessments, local research, vital signs and state-of-the-area reports, endowment and legacy giving material, donor stewardship and reporting, board and committee papers, and material for the advisors who introduce donors. Our editors read a fund agreement as it will be read when its signatories are gone.

What the editing involves

A fund agreement decides whether a foundation can do its job in thirty years, and its weak point is the description of the donor's role. Warm language about partnership and honoring a donor's wishes reads well at signing and settles nothing afterward. It leaves open whether a recommendation is advisory or binding, who may make one after the donor dies, and what happens when a recommended organization closes or falls short of the foundation's standards. It is also silent on what the foundation does when a stated purpose becomes impossible.

The advisory nature of a recommendation is better stated plainly, because the foundation's legal control is not negotiable, and warmer language builds an expectation that will be disappointed. An agreement providing that the donor "may recommend grants, which the board may accept or decline" costs nothing at signing, and it stops a family arriving in 2030 believing they hold a veto. Successor advisors need naming, or a method of appointing them, with an end point rather than an indefinite chain of descendants.

A variation power matters as much, and it needs its test written down: the board may redirect the fund when the named recipient no longer exists or cannot carry out the purpose. The purpose needs a generality that survives the loss of a named organization. Had the 1998 agreement read "music education for young people in the county," the closing of the orchestra would have been an administrative matter rather than a question for counsel. Agreements drafted this way stay workable long after their authors have gone.

Confidentiality and the limits of our role

Everything you send us remains confidential, including donor information, fund agreements, and board papers. We are editors, not legal, tax, or philanthropic advisors, and we offer no opinion on fund structure, tax treatment, or any grant decision, which belong with your own advisors. What we can do is make agreements durable and donor material honest about how the arrangement works.