Foundation Reports Record Year in 2015
Mark D. Bloom, Chair,
ACB Foundation
Foundation achievements for the prior year. And so I am particularly delighted and thankful to report that 2015 was another record year for the Foundation, with donations of $274,017.92.
While this amount exceeded our target by 8%, the results are even more remarkable when viewed in the context of how far the Foundation and Pro Bono Committee have come in just the past few years. In 2011 total donations to the Foundation came to $137,000, meaning that we have doubled our fundraising in only four short years! Indeed, 2015 also set a record for participation, as 65% of our Fellows included the Foundation in their charitable giving for that year.
Through the generosity of all who joined in our fundraising effort and the generous support of an annual stipend from the College, the Foundation’s Pro Bono Committee was able to fund $320,000 in grants of up to $10,000 to 34 programs supporting pro bono bankruptcy legal services in 17 different states and the District of Columbia. To put this amount in context as well, as recently as 2007 the Pro Bono Committee had a budget of $70,000 but literally could not give all that money away, procuring worthy grant requests of only $53,000. So the simple arithmetic here is that in eight short years we have increased our financial support for pro bono programs by six times, from $53,000 in 2007 to $320,000 in 2015.
As we celebrate this remarkable growth we are grateful to each and every one of the Fellows who contributed to the Foundation, to the Chairs of the Circuit Campaigns and their fundraising teams who blanketed the Fellows within their Circuits with requests and reminders, and especially to our outgoing Treasurer Tom Lumsden, who established individual targets and goals for each Circuit and then spent countless hours in December in daily contact with the Campaign Chairs to help meet those targets.
Regrettably Tom’s second two-year term as our Foundation Treasurer concluded in March. We thank him enormously for his service to the Foundation as he embarks on his next mission as Treasurer of the College, and are excited to welcome Marti Kopacz as his successor. We also have not let Tom completely off the hook, as he has agreed for at least the next year to chair our newly-formed Best Practices Committee that each year will review the Circuit Campaigns to determine what ideas and approaches have been effective in each Circuit and impart those best practices to the next year’s Campaign Chairs.
The Foundation Board also has established a Development Committee to be chaired by Richard Carmody, who has long been active on the Pro Bono Committee and will continue his service on the Board as its first Senior Director. The Development Committee has established three initial task forces to focus on initiatives intended to develop new and enhanced sources of revenue for the Foundation: Major Gifts, an outreach program intended to solicit donations from corporations, civic and charitable trusts and other sources outside the College; Creditor Trusts, an effort to increase the designation of the Foundation as recipient of surplus or unclaimed funds in Chapter 11 cases and liquidating trusts; and Legacy Gifts, to focus on the longer-term estate planning of our Fellows to consider the Foundation in their wills and trusts, and obtain the tax advantage of directing mandatory redemptions from qualified IRAs and other retirement accounts to the Foundation.
Volunteers needed! Both Richard and Tom are anxious to populate these new Committees with Fellows who can bring ideas and enthusiasm to the pursuit of their goals. Whether you’ve supported the Foundation in the past or been waiting for an opportunity that
Of all the columns I get to write for this publication as Foundation Chair, it is always this one that I enjoy most as I report on the