About the Foundation
"It is truly my great pleasure to introduce to you, the people of the Capital Region, to the GreaterGood Foundation. This is a wonderful organisation developed to provide an opportunity for each and every member of our community to become a philanthropist. Gifts to GreaterGood and the causes and activities it supports will forever make a difference to the quality of life in our unique part of Australia."
Lady Helen Deane
What is GreaterGood?
The Capital Region Community Foundation, known as GreaterGood, is a public charitable trust established in 2003 to give you, the people of the region, a convenient, low cost structure to build a permanent fund to support projects, activities and charities that address the region's most challenging social issues. GreaterGood is a community based, independent organisation, which operates with the support of the Public Trustee for the ACT and an independent volunteer Board and Management Committee.
What is a Community Foundation?
A community foundation is an independent philanthropic organisation working in a specific geographic area. The foundation attracts tax-deductible donations to its Public (Open) Fund and builds a capital base known as a corpus - a fund of money invested in perpetuity. This provides a permanent and growing source of funding with the income earned each year being returned to the community as annual grants to deductible gift recipients or other tax deductible entities. In addition, the community foundation through the charitable company or trust can support wider charitable purposes.
What is the history of community foundations?
The first community foundation was formed in the United States city of Cleveland in 1908, the brainchild of lawyer Frederick Harris Goff. His aim was to pool bequests from wills and collect donations - large and small - from the wider community, allowing more people to become involved in philanthropy.
Goff's idea spread across the United States and to Canada between 1915 and 1930. Today there are more than 500 foundations in the USA and 110 in Canada. The United Kingdom took up the concept in the 1980s and the movement is continuing to grow strongly with more than 30 foundations established.
Australia joined the trend in 1983 with the creation of the Victorian Community Foundation, with others following over the next 12 years. In 2000, the establishment of the Foundation for Rural and Regional Renewal (FRRR) boosted the community foundation cause, helping to establish new foundations across Australia. There are now over 25 established community foundations with Public Fund and DGR status, 15 established community foundations with DGR status pending and 10 community foundations in the process of being established.