Welcome

Do you want to make your giving matter more? Who doesn't?

Whether you're planning a deferred gift, writing a will, or giving today, you'll find the support you need at The New York Community Trust. You can plan a legacy, organize your charitable giving, learn about important City issues, and be part of a sophisticated group of donors who collectively improve our hometown and make grants to charities around the country. We invite you to explore this site and call us to find out more.

Members of the Harlem Honeys & Bears Swim Team, an athletic group for New Yorkers 50 and older, practicing at the Hansborough Recreation Center. A Trust grant of $100,000 to the New York Academy of Medicine is helping make New York City a more senior-friendly place to live.

Why choose a community foundation?

Community foundations such as ours exist to make it easy for people to be philanthropists and to build an endowment to meet changing community needs over time.

They were started in 1914 by a Cleveland banker who felt that the practices of the day were needlessly eroding charitable funds. It was expensive to administer charitable trusts in banks, which knew more about investing money than giving it away. And it was expensive to go to court when charitable funds had outlasted their purposes and needed to be changed to stay useful.

The banker proposed an organization, governed by civic leaders, that would handle permanent funds for charitable individuals and distribute grants to good causes in their names, forever. The community foundation would benefit from economies of scale, offering professional management to affluent and modest donors alike. Banks would continue to manage the investment of principal and the civic leaders would see to it that donors’ wishes were carried out. Read more about our history »

Today, more than 700 community foundations serve thousands of donors in all 50 states. Some continue to use the original trust model and others are organized as charitable corporations, using professional investment advisors to manage their assets. In addition to managing funds established through wills, community foundations today also offer services to donors during their lifetimes. Read more about setting up a fund at The Trust »