The Los Alamos Community Foundation offers agency funds as an opportunity for nonprofits to grow sustainable support. An agency fund is an endowment held at LACF.  The foundation provides responsible and professional fund management and investment. Investment income from your fund is distributed annually to provide sustainable support for the mission of your organization.

Advantages of Establishing an Agency Fund:

• Enables board members and volunteers to focus on the organization’s mission while the Los Alamos Community Foundation focuses on the investment of the endowment.
• Promotes donor confidence by ensuring permanent assets are segregated in an endowment overseen by a professional investment manager.
• Increased visibility for your endowment by being part of the Los Alamos Community Foundation family of funds.

Financial Facts:

• You can grow sustainable support for your organization as your fund is combined with other Community Foundation funds into professionally managed portfolios. This allows greater diversification of investments and access to investment vehicles.
• Each fund is charged an administrative fee based on the size of investment.

Why Endowments?

• Endowments provide a reliable stream of income to the nonprofit organization in perpetuity. The endowment’s purchasing power is preserved; thus a fund that generates income to operate a particular program today can be designed to produce income sufficient to run that same program twenty years from now and beyond. This takes pressure off of staff to have to fundraise anew for the program each year. 
• Endowments enhance stability and prestige. A well-managed endowment sends a message of planned long-term stability, fiscal responsibility, and financial viability. It enhances an organization’s credibility with other potential funders, including grant-making foundations and donors.
• Endowments provide a level of financial independence from economic, governmental, and political forces. They can augment uncertain income sources, broaden the overall revenue mix, improve the income statement, and provide leverage for bond-rating capacity and loans, if needed.
• Endowments build a pipeline for future gifts. Having an endowment in an organization’s portfolio can help to attract deferred gifts, such as bequests, which position the organization to enjoy increasingly large gifts in the future. Donors that make gifts to an organization’s endowment are more likely to support its annual campaign and future capital campaigns as well.