The Community Foundation of Sarasota County is a public charity founded in 1979 by the Southwest Florida Estate Planning Council as a resource for caring individuals and the causes they support, enabling them to make a charitable impact on the community. Since our founding, the Community Foundation has been making the important connection between individuals' personal memories, passions, dreams and the fulfillment of their charitable goals. We help create permanent charitable funds of everlasting impact. These funds ensure that people of vision will have an enduring influence on the life of their community and the charitable causes they hold dear. With assets of over $273 million in more than 1,200 charitable funds, the Community Foundation awarded grants and scholarships totaling more than $19.3 million dollars this past year in the areas of education, health and human services, the arts, animal welfare, and the environment. Since our founding, more than $144 million has been invested back into the community through grants and scholarships. We are one of more than 700 community foundations in the U.S. and Canada enjoying rapid growth, making our field the fastest growing sector of American philanthropy. Tax-deductible gifts and bequests make up the permanent endowment of community foundations and annual income from investment of that endowment is used to match donors' charitable interests with needs in the community through grants and scholarships. Each community foundation is governed by a board of directors made up of respected volunteer business and civic leaders chosen to represent the rich diversity of the population.