Create and name a fund, serve as its advisor, and recommend charitable distributions. Each gift to your OCCF fund triggers an immediate tax deduction. OCCF handles the legal, financial, and administrative burdens, including writing grant checks and tracking results.

As a donor advisor, you can take your time and focus on the fun part: recommending grants from your fund.

A Note on Endowment:
OCCF donor-advised funds may or may not be endowed. If endowed, your original gift becomes the corpus, or principal, of the fund, and remains invested to fuel future granting. Over time, an endowed fund’s balance continues to grow while awarding grants every year. If not endowed, your original gift is available for grants right away. This is a good way to put your gift to immediate use and to continue the momentum by making contributions and awarding grants from your fund each year.

The Center for Engaged Philanthropy  provides a customized level of philanthropic service designed to support the individual needs of signature fund advisors. We will focus on supporting your unique philanthropic passions and will help you create a family giving plan that includes a personal philanthropic mission statement, multi-generational family engagement, access to nonprofit events and site visits, and administration of grant programs.

Most importantly, you will have direct access to our deep knowledge of Orange County nonprofits and expert industry knowledge of the nonprofit and grantmaking landscape.

The Center for Engaged Philanthropy provides a customized level of philanthropic service designed to support the individual needs of signature fund advisors. Personalized philanthropy, flexible investment options: Our Signature Fund combines the best features of a private foundation with all the benefits of a donor-advised fund. The high level of customized philanthropic support that comes with a Signature Fund at OCCF means you enjoy the utmost privacy, flexibility, family involvement, recognition, and expertise. A donor-advised fund with assets of $1 million or more can qualify to become a Signature Fund.

Support a specific area of interest, e.g., the arts, education, the environment, healthcare — or anything that sparks your philanthropic interest — by establishing a fund to provide enduring grant support over time.

Funded through a bequest, a legacy fund ensures that your philanthropic vision lives on under the careful stewardship of OCCF’s philanthropic advisors and board of governors.

There are many options for structuring your philanthropic legacy guidelines. This includes assigning fund advisory rights to other family members or friends, designating specific organizations to receive annual support, or identifying needs in the community you would like your fund to support (i.e. helping veterans receive employment readiness and job skills), or any combination of these options.

Wherever your passion lies, we will work with your structure and guidelines to meet your interests.

The Orange County Endowment was established in 1994 to ensure that OCCF could respond quickly and effectively to Orange County’s most pressing needs. Five sub-funds within the Orange County Endowment support specific areas of need:

• Excellence in Education Fund: Supports programs that help close the achievement gap for local students, with a focus on training and development for teachers using research-based practices.
• Health and Wellness Fund: Supports prevention and early health intervention for children with special focus on access to healthcare, immunization, and child abuse prevention.
• Arts and Culture Fund: Supports the growth and sustainability of the nonprofit arts and cultural sector in Orange County, with a sub-fund devoted solely to supporting arts education for local students.
• Environment Fund: Supports hands-on education in schools, public understanding of Orange County’s unique natural resources, and conservation and preservation of open spaces.
• Special Needs Fund: Supports programs that enhance the quality of life for people living with disabilities and other special needs, therapeutic and/or intervention services, adaptive equipment or assistive technology, and respite care services for families and caregivers.

Donate to the Orange County Endowment

If you have deep ties to a particular organization, a designated agency endowment helps you support it forever.

Created by gifts or bequests, scholarship funds help students cover the escalating costs of higher education. Add to an existing fund, or work with OCCF to establish your own.