The Winona Community Foundation is a tax-exempt public charity that enables people like you to establish charitable funds. Funds are commingled with our other funds and managed professionally. These assets will grow over time. You and your family and colleagues are encouraged to continue giving to the fund to help it grow even more. Gifts may be awarded from the fund to support nonprofit organizations, in accordance with your interests and priorities.

Like all community foundations, we are overseen by a volunteer board of leading citizens and run by professionals with expertise in knowing our community's needs. We go beyond simply making grants that advance charitable activities: we also identify current and emerging issues, stimulate resources to address those needs and help our region prepare for the future.

It is for these reasons that community foundations represent one of the fastest growing areas of philanthropy. When charitably minded people like you seek suitable ways to give, we can help you make a difference by making your giving as easy and effective as possible.

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Reflections by Gabe Manrique

Now, that  I have served on the WCF board for three years and am now the Treasurer of the executive committee, I reflected on my understanding of the WCF.  My relatively short exposure to the Foundation taught me that at its core, a community foundation is a vehicle to do good for the community through philanthropic acts – both big and small.  Through such a foundation, all of us have the opportunity to provide for specific and general needs of the community – even in perpetuity.

People entrust a part of their hard-earned assets for any number of reasons – to honor the memory of a loved one, to respond to a specific need, to support a community initiative, and sometimes, to simply give back.  But whatever the reason for giving, the overarching motivation is that the benefits go back to the local population and that the quality of life is improved in good measure for some or all of the community’s members.  As for the WCF’s board members, it is precisely because we are being entrusted by many people with their hard-earned assets and because we are aware of the tremendous potential for a community foundation to do good, we take very seriously our roles as guardians of the WCF. 

I  also reflect on why so many individuals I meet in Winona are so open and generous and how the WCF’s assets rose from a few thousand to more than $10 million in a relatively short period of time. 

More than 180 years ago, the French writer Alexis de Tocqueville wrote of American Exceptionalism after he studied democracy in the United States.   The American experiment is not an experiment in arrogance, self-righteousness, or selfishness. What is exceptional about the American experiment is that in this country and in this society we have found a way to balance our public and private interests, our exercise of liberty with our commitment to equality, and our individualism with our responsibility to the community. 

Community Foundations all over the United States, much like the Winona Community Foundation, are institutions that reflect the good side of American Exceptionalism.  Community Foundations provide the perfect complement to the individualism that we so value and reward in our society. Through our participation in a community foundation we can, together, provide for the advancement of public interests, bring a measure of equality to those less fortunate, and work to serve our own community.