Newsletter Archive

Professional Advisor Seminar to Feature Lauren Detzel

The Southwest Florida Community Foundation welcomes Lauren Detzel to our Professional Advisors Seminar on September 15, 2010. Ms. Detzel is chair of Dean Mead’s Estate and Succession Planning Department and specializes in techniques to reduce or avoid paying estate tax, such as family limited partnerships, grantor retained annuity trusts, sales to intentionally defective trusts, charitable trusts, lifetime gifts, and generation skipping trusts. Particular emphasis includes planning for the succession of closely held or family business. She also handles many contested tax matters in the transfer tax area, ranging from audits of returns and administrative appeals within the IRS to Tax Court and Federal District Court litigation. Ms. Detzel handles the entire gamut of administration of estates and trusts, including contested matters of will and trust interpretation and reformation. She will be discussing “Current Developments That Affect Estate Planning, Including Legislative Proposals” and how they might affect your firm and your clients.

This event is open to professional advisors only and continuing educations credits are available for Estate Planning Attorneys, Trust Officers, CPAs, and Financial Planners (Special thanks to Wiltshire, Whitley, Richardson and English for providing CPA credit assistance.). The cost for the luncheon is $30.

Three ways to register:

Online: Click the banner above to access our secure online registration and payment page, or...

Fax: Download, print, and fax the form below, or...

Phone: Call us at 239-274-5900 and register/pay by phone.

SWFLCF announces online grant applications

Coming September 15, 2010, the Southwest Florida Community Foundation’s grant applications and evaluation forms are going online! With our new E-Apply feature, the grant application process will be greatly streamlined, as nonprofits will now be able to complete and submit their applications electronically, upload attachments, and track the status of their submissions to the Community Foundation. In preparation for this change, we are moving the Capacity Grant deadline back one month to October 15, 2010. The Capacity Grant application will be the first application to go online and a link to the online application will be available on our website beginning September 15. Other grant applications will be available online in later months. We are confident that you will enjoy our new E-Apply feature and will be welcoming your comments.

SWFLCF Featured on greatnonprofits.org

SWFLCF is now featured on GreatNonprofits.org. Visit our profile pages on GreatNonprofits.org to see what people are saying about us. While you're there, why not leave an uplifting comment of your own?

SWFL MicroEnterprise Project Announced

The Southwest Florida Community Foundation (SWFLCF) is excited to announce that we have entered into a partnership with a number of other local organizations to create the Southwest Florida MicroEnterprise Project. This project will provide training and loans to community members, specifically the unemployed, to start their own businesses.

SWFLCF’s role is to solicit, accept, and disburse funds on behalf of this project, and SWFLCF is the main source of reporting back to financial supporters. All funding flows through SWFLCF, which has committed $20,000 per year for three years to get the project off the ground.

Goodwill Industries of Southwest Florida is the administrator of the program and coordinates the training, mentoring, and loan applications of clients. The training curriculum that is used has been implemented by Goodwill at several other sites around the country with great success. SCORE mentors and recruits mentors for those in the program.

The Southwest Florida Enterprise Center provides training space and conducts the training. Through the rigorous training curriculum, clients determine if their projects are viable and if they should move forward with their business plans.

Successful completion of this program makes a client eligible to pursue a microloan with ACCION USA, which specializes in working with small business owners who cannot borrow from the bank due to business type, a short length of time in business, or an insufficient credit history. ACCION has a 98% repayment rate on their loans. There are multiple other organizations that potentially will be partnering on this project as well.

For general information on the Southwest Florida Micro Enterprise Project, visit www.swflmicro.com.

To find out how you can financially support this important community project, click HERE.

Read Us in the Florida Weekly

Every week in the Florida Weekly newspaper, articles of Southwest Florida Community Foundation staff and guest contributors are featured in the Giving section. Pick up your free copy around town or visit the Florida Weekly website at www.floridaweekly.com.

Read us in the Island sun

SWFLCF is also featured monthly in the Island Sun Newspaper of Sanibel and Captiva Islands. Pick up your free copy around town or visit their website at www.islandsunnews.com.