Administrative Costs
Foundations across the world have to pay for their staff, marketing and office spaces. To do this they either have a generous benefactor who has contributed enough funding to enable those fees to be absorbed, or, they charge an administration fee.
Some of the Community Foundations in Canada have a tiered administrative fee table. These tables can be quite complicated as they are based on not only endowment values but flow through funding as well. That is to say, they charge one value for the endowment and a higher value (in some cases up to 15%) for flow through funding.
Mission Community Foundation has one flat administration fee of 1.5% as well as an investment advisor fee of 1% that is charged to all endowed funds. On flow through funds provided for one-time scholarships or grants, Mission Community Foundation currently does not charge administration or investment fees. Our position is that flow through funds help increase our visibility and will not charge for what is effectively free advertising. Every group that gives us these flow through funds advertises that they contributed and our award winner announcements advertise back to them. It’s a win for the students, win for the benefactors, and win for the Foundation.
