​Family Day began at the North Dakota Museum of Art under the leadership of Sue Fink in 2004. The original goal of the program, initially called Saturday Art Workshops, was to provide children and their families an opportunity to engage in art activities while exploring a wide variety of media with modeling and guidance.

As the current Education Director, I am continually striving to bring fresh and exciting experiences to our Family Day programming. My goal is to ensure that everyone feels welcomed at our museum, and for young people, the chance to connect with art can have a lasting impact on their lives. Equally important are the parents and caregivers who bring their children to these events, encouraging creativity and fostering a love of art that extends beyond the museum walls.

For over twenty years, we’ve been inviting participants of all ages to explore diverse artistic practices while surrounded by stunning artwork in the spacious museum galleries. In 2024, we were proud to welcome over a thousand curious guests, alongside numerous arts organizations and local artists who partnered with us to foster a deeper appreciation for art and highlight its significance in our community.

Family Day events are always free and open to the public, ensuring accessibility for all families. We are able to keep it that way thanks to the generous support of foundations, businesses, and individual donors who believe in the power of art to connect and inspire. Local businesses contribute through in-kind donations, and individuals support the program through their gifts.

The support from the Community Foundation makes it possible for us to provide materials, bring in guest artists, and maintain a welcoming space where families can experience the joy of creating together.

Each event is held on the fourth Saturday of select months (October, November, January, February, March, and April) from 10:00 AM to 12:00 PM, offering hands-on projects and unique collaborative experiences. The atmosphere is casual, encouraging families to drop in, create, and leave when they’re ready. These events inspire children by connecting our world-class exhibitions to real hands-on experiences—just like the artists they see on our walls.

For example:

• For A Beautiful Mess: Knotters and Weavers of the Vanguard, we created woven baskets.
• For New Acquisitions, we explored a variety of artistic styles, encouraging participants to experiment with different approaches inspired by the artworks, such as air-dry clay, collage, and watercolor paint.
• For Maurice Sendak: 50 Years, we partnered with local libraries and community organizations to celebrate the beloved author and illustrator. We also created monsters inspired by Where the Wild Things Are.
• This fall, for Stories of Place, we explored paper marbling and pin-and-thread art.
• Most recently, for Women at War: An Exhibition by Contemporary Women Artists from Ukraine, we explored traditional Ukrainian folk arts, including Motanka doll-making.

One of the most exciting aspects of Family Day is witnessing the creativity of our young participants. At a recent event, a child made a Motanka doll with a mohawk, putting their own twist on a Ukrainian tradition. During a collage activity, two sisters collaborated on a piece they called "Bird Lady", featuring photos of Queen Elizabeth surrounded by dollar bills and birds.

In addition to being inspired by our exhibitions, I always try to introduce a new medium for our guests to explore. We’ve had a variety of activities, including painting, clay, fiber arts, scratchboard art, pumpkin decorating, and more. Our volunteers play a key role in making it all come together, assisting in the activities and guiding participants as they explore their creative ideas. It’s a fun, relaxed environment where everyone can create something special to take home, along with the skills and confidence to recreate these projects at home, making art more accessible for families to continue enjoying together.
Upcoming Family Day Activities:

• February 22 – Exploring Ukrainian traditions
• March 29 – Experimenting with various art techniques and media
• April 26 – Creating prints and paintings

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Thanks to our community of supporters, Family Day continues to bring people together in the spirit of creativity and discovery.

MJ McHugh, Education Director, NDMOA

​January

• You’ve likely already reviewed your year-end activity to determine which donors were most active at year-end, and which of these active donors have already established a planned gift or have otherwise supported your endowment. 
• As you finished up your thank you notes, you very likely ran across at least a handful of donors that seemed ready for deeper engagement. Let’s carry that momentum forward!

February

• Reach out one-by-one to the donors you noted in January as potentially ready for deeper engagement. Messages along the lines of planning for the year ahead and taking advantage of QCDs early in the year will resonate well.
• Begin planning outreach to donors related to upcoming tax time. This is an excellent time to plant seeds with donors because they will be reviewing last year’s financial and tax matters with their advisors. 
• Consider also deploying content that focuses on involving family in supporting your organization, aligning loosely with Valentine’s Day. You can also showcase heartwarming stories of impact.
• Participate in Giving Hearts Day.

March

• Continue your tax-time outreach noted above.
• Be sure to include reminders about the benefits of giving appreciated stock and the charitable deduction in general. This is important because as your donors review their tax return information for 2024, they may notice instances where they could (should!) have given appreciated stock instead of cash. They might also realize that they should have given more to charity than they did. This can help you generate gifts to your annual fund and endowment.

April

• Continue tax time reminders in all of your one-on-one communications. If you’ve promoted tax messages as noted above for March, you can get even more mileage out of the content by forwarding your March communications to donors in real time as you are on the phone with them. Sometimes people miss things in their email inboxes, but you always get a second chance to send it during a phone conversation or even live during a meeting.
• If you send an April communication, consider using “spring cleaning” types of themes about getting organized and planning 2025 charitable gifts to your annual fund and endowment fund. This can help increase donor giving during the first half of the year.      

May

• This is the time of year that donors may be gearing up for some down time during the summer. This is an excellent time to lean into conversations about bequests, IRA beneficiary designations, and other types of planned gifts to your endowment.

June

• With tax time behind them, and the year-end rush still months away, donors and their advisors typically have more bandwidth to dig into discussions about including your organization’s endowment in an estate plan. Just because the pace is slower doesn’t mean the energy takes a hit! This is a great time to catch donors in a more relaxed mode.
• Focus your content on mid-year trends and summer reading ideas to learn about charitable giving.

July

• This is a good time of year to zero in on legislative and tax law updates. By this time in the year, we have a pretty good idea of legislative agendas. Plus, you want donors to start thinking about you for year-end transactions.
• ​Considering signing up for Giving Hearts Day for 2026.

August

• Make a Will Month is a useful time for bequest and estate planning reminders, incorporating charitable planning into a business succession plan, planned giving, and giving while living. Use these themes in your communications.
• Content can touch on not only Make a Will Month, but also forecasting the busy third and fourth quarters. Now is the time for donors to discuss endowment gifts, major gifts, and planned gifts.

September

• This is a really busy time of year, but you should not stop the drumbeat!
• Content can include encouraging donors to start looking at how their giving goals are shaping up for the year. If a donor has expressed intentions to set up a planned gift to your endowment fund, or give to your endowment fund via a Qualified Charitable Distribution, it’s wise to set these transactions in motion now to avoid the year-end rush.

October

• This is a particularly good time for personal outreach to all donors who have given to your endowment fund in the past or expressed interest in doing so. Work your way through the list, touching base personally with each donor.
• Consider planning an outreach campaign to drop off holiday cards, cookies, or other small gifts to your endowment donors and legacy endowment donors.

November

• Focus your communications on reminders about the wide variety of assets that can be given to your endowment fund, and year-end deadlines for specific types of gifts such as checks, QCDs, gifts of publicly-traded stock, credit card gifts, etc.
• Emphasize the tax benefits of giving highly-appreciated stock to your endowment fund, as well as the benefits of naming your endowment fund as the beneficiary of an IRA.
• Get your donors and prospects excited for Giving Tuesday on December 2, 2025.

December

• Participate in Giving Tuesday.
• Be highly responsive to all donor inquiries; same day responsiveness is crucial, and ideally within the first couple of hours.
• Focus your marketing content on the importance of endowment giving and additional year-end tips.                         

Most of your philanthropic clients likely support a wide variety of charities year after year. The causes they support represent a range of motivations, including personal experience, a role as a volunteer or board member, family tradition, or alignment with values and community priorities.

Many of the charitable organizations your clients support are local. That’s important to note because it means that your clients are especially well-positioned to lean into the Community Foundation’s unique position as the hub for charitable giving and local knowledge. Here are three reasons that matters:

• Clients can tap into the team’s knowledge about specific organizations, including financial information, data about the impact of a charity’s programs, and observations of an organization’s areas of greatest need.
• Clients can choose from a variety of fund types depending on what they’d like to achieve. A designated fund, for example, allows your client to set aside tax-deductible dollars that are dedicated to supporting a specific organization. Through the Community Foundation’s services, funds are distributed over time to the charity while the assets remaining in the fund are protected from the charity’s creditors. Another example is an unrestricted fund, which leverages the Community Foundation’s extensive research about the needs of the community and the nonprofit programs that are addressing those needs.
• Clients can work with the Community Foundation to leave a bequest to an endowment fund to support community needs for generations to come. As a perpetual organization, the Community Foundation ensures that charitable giving stays strong in our region to address important needs as they evolve over time.

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Of course, if your client establishes a donor-advised fund at the Community Foundation, the fund can support local causes as well as causes across the country. As the hub for your clients’ charitable giving, our tools and our team are dedicated to helping your clients achieve their charitable goals both near and far. Working with the local Community Foundation, no matter what a particular client’s charitable priorities may be, is itself a strong show of support for philanthropy right here in our community. 

The team at the Community Foundation is honored to serve as a resource and sounding board as you build your charitable plans and pursue your philanthropic objectives for making a difference in the community. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not intended as legal, accounting, or financial planning advice. Please consult your tax or legal advisor to learn how this information might apply to your own situation.

​As attorneys, CPAs, and financial advisors, you are well aware that you have clients’ attention when tax season rolls around. This makes it a great time to cover tax planning strategies for the current year and beyond. To help incorporate charitable giving topics into your tax season client conversations, we’ve put together tips to address three scenarios where the Community Foundation can assist your efforts.

Evaluate QCDs sooner rather than later.
If: Your client missed the 2024 deadline for a Qualified Charitable Distribution.
Then: Make sure the client took an RMD for 2024 (if required to do so). Start planning now for 2025 QCDs, paying very close attention to the required process. QCDs are an excellent tool for your clients who’ve reached the age of 70 ½ to give to a designated, field-of-interest, or unrestricted fund (donor-advised funds are not eligible), but if the client waits until the last minute at year-end, there might not be time for the transaction to be completed by December 31 as required. Plus, QCDs executed early in the year can help avoid negative effects of the "first-dollars-out rule” so that the QCD can count towards your client’s 2025 RMD.

Watch for charitable giving opportunities in business succession planning.
If: Your client is beginning to consider exit strategies for a closely-held business.
Then: Reach out to the Community Foundation right away. Gifts of closely-held stock to a charitable fund can be a very useful component of a business succession plan. That’s because a client can gift shares of the business, which in turn means that no capital gains tax will apply to the gifted portion when the business eventually sells. The proceeds of the gifted shares flow into the fund to be used for your client’s charitable priorities. Keep in mind that timing is crucial; if a deal is in the works at the time the shares are transferred to the charitable fund, the charitable deduction is in jeopardy.

Consider gifts of appreciated stock early in the year.
If: Your client’s stock portfolio made big gains last year.
Then: Evaluate whether it might be wise to make gifts of appreciated stock to a fund at the Community Foundation early in the year, rather than waiting until the end of the year. If certain stock positions are high right now, it’s worth considering whether a gift in the very near future could be a good move to maximize charitable dollars. As a reminder, gifts of stock to a public charity are eligible for a charitable deduction in the amount of the stock’s fair market value at the time of transfer. And, when the stock is sold so that its proceeds can be deployed to further your client’s charitable goals, no capital gains tax will apply.
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Our goal is to be your go-to sounding board for any client situation where charitable giving is an option. Please reach out anytime you and a client are discussing philanthropy. In most cases, the Community Foundation can help. Even if our tools are not a fit, we will point you in the right direction!

The team at the Community Foundation is honored to serve as a resource and sounding board as you build your charitable plans and pursue your philanthropic objectives for making a difference in the community. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not intended as legal, accounting, or financial planning advice. Please consult your tax or legal advisor to learn how this information might apply to your own situation.

As you consider your 2025 giving priorities, you’ll no doubt recall that writing a check to favorite charities is not the only way to support the causes you love. But sometimes it seems easiest to reach for the checkbook because it’s overwhelming to think about all the options.

You might be experiencing what’s known as the “paradox of choice,” a phenomenon where an abundance of options actually decreases your satisfaction and diminishes your decision-making ability. Too many choices can cause decision fatigue, anxiety, and regret over potentially missed opportunities.

We understand! The team at the Community Foundation is here for you. We’ll help you evaluate potential assets that would make great gifts to your donor-advised or other type of fund at the Community Foundation, including:

• Gifts of publicly-traded stock, allowing you to potentially avoid capital gains tax
• Giving shares of closely-held business interests to your fund as part of a long-term business succession plan
• Gifts of real estate, including farmland or commercial property, allowing you to potentially avoid capital gains tax and reduce the value of your taxable estate if future estate taxes are a concern
• Beneficiary designations on retirement plans, and even “Qualified Charitable Distributions” from your IRA to a designated or field-of-interest fund if you are over the age of 70 ½
• Naming your fund at the Community Foundation as the beneficiary of a life insurance policy, or even transferring a whole life policy and making annual tax-deductible contributions to the Community Foundation to cover the premium
• Gifts of oil and gas interests, cryptocurrency, and collectibles are also possibilities for adding to your fund at the Community Foundation

The bottom line here is that our team can help you work through the possibilities. We’ll make sure that the daunting range of options doesn’t prevent you from making the best decisions to achieve both your financial planning and charitable giving goals.
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​The team at the Community Foundation is honored to serve as a resource and sounding board as you build your charitable plans and pursue your philanthropic objectives for making a difference in the community. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not intended as legal, accounting, or financial planning advice. Please consult your tax or legal advisor to learn how this information might apply to your own situation.

A Qualified Charitable Distribution (“QCD”) is a useful tool if you’ve reached the age of 70 ½ and want to give to a designated, field-of-interest, or unrestricted fund at the Community Foundation. Indeed, in 2025, you can direct up to $108,000 from your IRA to many types of funds at the Community Foundation, although donor-advised funds are not eligible.
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But what if you intended to make a QCD in 2024 and time got away from you? Perhaps you even initiated a QCD on December 31, but it was too late to qualify for 2024 because of the way these transactions are settled between administrators and recipients. This is a complex topic for sure, and you’ll want to discuss the details with your tax advisors. At a high-level, here are a few considerations if you missed the opportunity last year.

First and foremost, ensure you have taken your Required Minimum Distribution (RMD) for 2024 if you are required to do so. Failing to take your RMD can result in significant penalties, so this should be your top priority. If you missed your RMD deadline because you were planning to make a QCD, you should file IRS Form 5329 and request a waiver.

While you can't retroactively make a QCD for the previous year, you can get a jump on 2025. Indeed, there are lots of reasons to make your QCDs early in the year. For example, it’s smart to try to avoid potential conflicts with the "first-dollars-out rule,” meaning that the first dollars withdrawn from an IRA will count toward your RMD. QCDs early in the year help ensure that it will count toward your RMD before taking any other distributions that might be taxable. And of course, avoiding the year-end rush is imperative.

The Community Foundation team is always happy to work with you and your advisors to help you carry out your charitable giving goals, whether you’re exploring a QCD or any of the many ways you can support the causes you love. We look forward to working with you this year!

The team at the Community Foundation is honored to serve as a resource and sounding board as you build your charitable plans and pursue your philanthropic objectives for making a difference in the community. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not intended as legal, accounting, or financial planning advice. Please consult your tax or legal advisor to learn how this information might apply to your own situation.

​A new year is in full swing, but you’ve still got plenty of time to consider your charitable impact and how you’d like to make a difference in 2025. A great way to do that is to reflect on the difference you’ve already made through the years.

For starters, think about how the many causes you’ve supported have resulted in tangible, positive improvements in the quality of life for so many people in our region. Indeed, many people are drawn to charitable giving and decide to establish a fund at the Community Foundation because of personal experiences with charities during a time of need. For example, perhaps a loved one benefited from groundbreaking medical research funded by charitable donations. Or maybe you or a family member overcame personal challenges with the help of nonprofit counseling services, or your business might have thrived thanks to a nonprofit-supported arts district or mentorship program. Nonprofit hospice care may have provided comfort and support during a difficult time with a family member. Even a cherished pet may have come into your life through a nonprofit animal rescue. What’s more, many people find that their happiness increases through acts of giving. When you know you’re helping someone, it makes you feel good!

The team at the Community Foundation is here to help you shape your charitable giving plan for 2025 and beyond. We’d welcome a conversation to review key components of your philanthropy and help you make the biggest impact possible. For example, we can review:

• Opportunities to accomplish your charitable giving goals this year through gifts of appreciated stock
• Opportunities to incorporate gifts to your fund in your estate plan and create a lasting  charitable legacy
• Examples of how you can join forces with other fund holders to support larger initiatives
• Examples of donors who are not only pursuing their own charitable priorities, but are also supporting the Community Foundation’s work to improve quality of life in our region for generations to come
• Reviewing historical grants to charities from your donor-advised fund and examples of the impact of those grants, which in turn can help inform future grant making to the causes you love
• Ways your grants and the charities you support are helping achieve positive community change in priorities identified as critical by the Community Foundation

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If you'd like to discuss your giving strategies or explore new ways to maximize your impact, please don't hesitate to reach out. We're here to help you achieve your philanthropic goals and create lasting change in our community.

The team at the Community Foundation is honored to serve as a resource and sounding board as you build your charitable plans and pursue your philanthropic objectives for making a difference in the community. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not intended as legal, accounting, or financial planning advice. Please consult your tax or legal advisor to learn how this information might apply to your own situation.