The Community Foundation of Grand Forks, East Grand Forks & Region is proud to announce the recipients of its 2025 Iseminger Endowment for the Arts grants. This year, ten regional arts organizations were awarded a total of $102,710, supporting a wide range of innovative projects designed to enrich the cultural fabric of our communities and create meaningful arts experiences for residents of all ages.

Established through the generous vision of local philanthropists, the Iseminger Endowment for the Arts is dedicated to fostering artistic expression and ensuring access to high-quality arts programming throughout Grand Forks, East Grand Forks, and the surrounding region. Learn more about the fund at gofoundation.org/iseminger-grants.

“The arts are fundamental to the vitality of our community - inspiring creativity, fostering connection, and providing invaluable opportunities for development, particularly for our youth,” said Becca Baumbach, President and CEO of the Community Foundation. “We are honored to support these exceptional organizations whose commitment to artistic excellence and community engagement makes a lasting impact.”

2025 Iseminger Endowment for the Arts Grant Recipients:

• North Dakota Shakespeare Festival – As You Like It (2025), Macbeth (2026), & Camp Will Week
  Free Shakespeare in the Park productions of As You Like It and Macbeth will return to downtown Grand Forks, along with the youth-focused “Camp Will Week.” A new Community Performance Series will bring Shakespeare to audiences facing barriers to attendance.
• Public Arts Commission – ArtFest 2026
  Funding will support the 25th annual ArtFest at University Park, enhancing hands-on activities and launching a curated art gallery. More than 20,000 attendees are expected to participate in this milestone celebration of visual arts.
• Greater Grand Forks Symphony Orchestra – December 2025 (Winter) Concert & May 2026 OIANT (Spring) Concert
  This grant supports two concerts: a traditional holiday performance featuring a local student soloist, and a spring event with OIANT, a visiting group from Argentina performing with native and nontraditional instruments in collaboration with local schools.
• Northern Valley Youth Orchestras – Season 15
  Support for NVYO’s 15th season includes summer camp, fall and winter concerts, and chamber music programming—providing symphonic training and performance opportunities for more than 150 young musicians aged 11–21.
• North Dakota Ballet Company – Let’s Get Crackin’
  This project brings The Nutcracker Extravaganza Holiday Ballet to the Empire Arts Center in December 2025, featuring dancers ages 3 to adult. Additional outreach includes school performances, nursing home visits, and sensory-friendly adaptive dance classes.
• North Dakota Museum of Art – Music Residencies: Imani Winds and Camerata Nordica
  Two internationally renowned ensembles—I­­mani Winds and Camerata Nordica—will lead concerts, children’s programming, classroom visits, and masterclasses during weeklong residencies in Grand Forks.
• Grand Forks Downtown Development Association – Downtown Interactive Mural
  A vibrant, community-driven interactive mural will be installed on the north side of downtown Grand Forks, activating public space, increasing foot traffic, and contributing to the city's creative economy.
• LISTEN, INC – Performing for Change: Celebrating Abilities on Stage
  An inclusive annual theater production will empower individuals with and without disabilities to share their talents on stage, fostering creativity, confidence, and community inclusion.
• Grand Cities Children’s Choir – Blowin’ in the Wind
  Funding will support two free major concerts in the Choir’s 24th season and bring nationally renowned choral composer Dr. Jacob Narverud to Grand Forks for educational workshops with youth and community singers.
• Empire Arts Center – We Are the Music Makers
  The Empire Theatre Company will stage Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in October 2025, casting performers aged 7 to 70 in a multigenerational musical that blends education, mentorship, and community entertainment.

These funded initiatives reflect the depth of artistic talent, collaboration, and vision within the region. The Community Foundation is honored to champion the work of these organizations and the transformative power of the arts in the Red River Valley.

As an estate planning, tax, or wealth advisor, you play a critical role in helping your clients maximize the impact of charitable giving while also optimizing tax benefits. Unfortunately, a 2023 survey found that only 19.2% of advisors regularly discuss charitable giving with clients, and another 44.2% do so only occasionally.

The Community Foundation can help! Our team is here as a sounding board for everything related to charitable giving. So, when the topic arises and your clients are interested in evaluating strategies for supporting the causes they care about, just loop us in.

Of course, this still means you’ll be looking for ways to bring up the topic in the first place. One of the easiest ways to do that is to talk with your clients about the benefits of donating highly-appreciated assets, such as stocks or real estate, to a fund at the Community Foundation. To help with that conversation, consider discussing the example of Alice, a hypothetical client.

Alice earns more than $500,000 per year. She wants to make a $10,000 gift to the Community Foundation’s nonprofit emergency fund. Alice holds shares of Apple, Inc., which she purchased more than 20 years ago–and the value of the shares has increased significantly. Alice also holds plenty of cash.

Alice is weighing writing a check to the Community Foundation for $10,000 or transferring shares of Apple stock with a total value of $10,000.

Of course, as an advisor, you know that it’s more advantageous for Alice to give the stock. But it might help to break it down into real numbers when you talk with Alice:

• Alice’s annual income of more than $500,000 lands her at a Federal marginal tax rate of 37% and a federal long-term capital gains tax rate of 23.8% (20% plus the 3.8% Net Investment Income Tax).
• Let’s assume that Alice itemizes her income tax deductions, and that Alice’s cost basis in the $10,000 worth of Apple shares is $2,000.
• If Alice gives cash to the Community Foundation and claims a charitable deduction of $10,000, the resulting Federal tax savings will be $3,700, bringing the net cost of the donation to $6,300.
• On the other hand, if Alice were to donate $10,000 of Apple stock to the Community Foundation instead of giving cash, the tax result would be much better because Alice would avoid an unrealized capital gain of $8,000, equating to $1,904 in capital gains tax avoided.
• The Federal income tax savings of $3,700, plus the $1,904 in capital gains tax avoided, results in a net cost to Alice of $4,396 for the $10,000 gift.
• The upshot here is that the gift to charity is $10,000 in either case, but giving cash “costs” Alice $6,300 while giving stock “costs” her just $4,396.

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Of course, the benefits of donating highly-appreciated assets to the Community Foundation are just the beginning. Charitable conversations with your clients lead to many productive discussions about maximizing lifetime giving, legacy planning, involving the next generation, and so much more. Please reach out to our team anytime! We’re happy to share more ideas and examples of the many ways your clients can make a difference.

​These days, it seems as though there’s a subscription for anything you need. A recent study noted that the average consumer holds approximately 4.5 entertainment streaming subscriptions alone. With the world continuing its shift toward convenient subscription options, it makes sense that your donors are happily moving in this direction as well.

In 2023, a year when revenue from one-time online giving decreased by 5%, revenue generated from monthly giving increased by 6%. In a more recent study, revenue from monthly giving outpaced revenue from one-time giving by 10%. Monthly giving is continuing to trend as an attractive giving option for donors. Here’s why that’s good news for you:

Recurring Givers are Committed
If you start a subscription for a new product or service, it’s likely that you’re pretty committed, or at least believe in the product enough to subscribe for multiple months. Monthly givers are no different. A study tracking donor trends from 2018-2022 showed that nonprofits had better than average retention rates for recurring givers. Indeed, if a donor starts a recurring gift, there’s a pretty good chance they’re bought into your mission and will be around for the long haul.

Recurring Givers Make it Easier to Plan
With one-time donors, it’s hard to know how much they’ll give from one year to the next. Turbulent economic conditions, busy family lives, or flat out forgetting to give can always affect your bottom line giving totals. With recurring givers, you can often expect a similar amount month-to-month, helping you plan your short-term budgets and expected income. Indeed, 91% of recurring donors have their gifts set on “autopilot” by automatically charging their credit or debit cards.

Recurring Givers Often Donate More Than Their Regular Gift
While recurring donors are already contributing a great deal to support your mission, 50% of recurring donors also make additional gifts throughout the year. Whether through regular communications, solicitations, or year-end gifts, recurring givers are excellent candidates for major gifts, endowment gifts, planned gifts, and legacy gifts. 
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Just because a donor has set giving on autopilot, though, it doesn’t mean the donor doesn't need cultivation. It’s actually the opposite. How are you caring for your recurring givers and building a community of some of the most faithful, committed partners to your work? And how are you optimizing your communications and training your team to bring in new recurring givers that will be around for the long haul, especially to ultimately make major gifts and leave a gift to your organization in their estate plans?
 
The Community Foundation team is happy to help you explore ways to elevate your stewardship strategies to deepen relationships with recurring donors so that they become strong supporters for your endowment or legacy program. We look forward to a conversation!

​The One Big Beautiful Bill Act was signed into law by President Trump on July 4, 2025, after the House of Representatives approved the Senate’s changes to H.R. 1, which passed the House by a narrow margin in May.

The OBBBA, with nearly 900 pages of provisions, reshapes policy across major sectors of the U.S. economy. Included in the OBBBA are several provisions that impact philanthropy. Three major takeaways are of particular importance as the Community Foundation helps donors, fund holders, and nonprofits–as well as attorneys, CPAs, and financial advisors–navigate charitable planning opportunities over the months and years ahead.

(Notably, the OBBBA omits several provisions that appeared in previous versions of the legislation, such as a proposed increase to the net investment income tax on private foundations.)

Insight #1: Standard Deduction Goes Higher

What’s in the OBBBA?
The new law makes permanent the standard deduction increases under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (TCJA), increasing the standard deduction for 2025 to $15,750 for single filers and $31,500 to taxpayers who are married and filing jointly. The new law also expands the “bonus” deduction for taxpayers 65 and older through 2028.

What’s more, under the new law, individuals who itemize may take charitable deductions only to the extent the charitable deductions exceed 0.5% of adjusted gross income. Furthermore, taxpayers in the top bracket can only claim a 35 percent tax deduction for charitable gifts instead of the full 37 percent that would otherwise apply to their income tax rate. Note also that the final bill permanently extended the 60% of adjusted gross income contribution limitation for cash gifts made to certain qualifying charities.

What does this mean for charitable giving?
With even fewer taxpayers eligible to itemize, and deductions capped for high-income earners, we’re likely to see a continuation of the chilling effect on charitable giving that occurred in the wake of the TCJA.

What can you do?
If you regularly support charities, it’s important to continue to do so whether or not you’re benefiting from a tax deduction. Our community needs you, now more than ever. If you’re a nonprofit, or if you’re an attorney, CPA, or financial advisor who works with charitable clients, remember that people do not give to charity solely to secure a tax deduction. Keep in mind that many other factors motivate charitable giving, and philanthropy is an important priority for many families. (This article in the Stanford Social Innovation Review has stood the test of time.)

Insight #2: Deduction for Non-Itemizers

What’s in the OBBA?
The new law includes a provision, effective after 2025, allowing non-itemizers to take a charitable deduction of $1,000 for single filers and $2,000 for taxpayers who are married and filing jointly. As has been the case in the past, gifts to donor-advised funds are not eligible. Unlike a previous (but smaller) similar provision, though, this law is not set to sunset.

What does this mean for charitable giving?
After the TCJA went into effect, households that itemize deductions dropped to under 10%. Parallel to this trend, the number of U.S. adults who give to charity in any given year has dropped over the last 20 years from nearly two-thirds to less than half, according to some studies. Against this backdrop, the OBBBA’s deduction for non-itemizers has the potential to re-motivate charitable giving among a significant number of households.

What can you do?
For everyone, now is the time to take a serious look at your charitable giving plans to support the causes you care about over the years ahead, especially if you are early in your career and not yet itemizing deductions. If you’ve already established a fund or you’re working with the Community Foundation in another way, please reach out to learn how we can help you make the most of the new tax laws, and even get your children and grandchildren involved. If you’re a nonprofit, now is the time to attract and engage brand new donors. And if you’re an attorney, CPA, or financial advisor, make sure you talk about charitable giving with your clients who don’t itemize; a $1000 or $2000 deduction could be just the motivation they need to begin a journey of philanthropy.

Insight#3: No Sunsetting Estate Tax Exemption

What’s in the OBBA?
For affluent taxpayers updating financial and estate plans, and for the attorneys, CPAs, and wealth managers advising them, the last couple of years have been a roller coaster because of the looming possibility that the TCJA’s increase to the estate tax exemption would sunset at the end of 2025. Finally, there is clarity: Under the OBBBA, the sunset will not happen. The new law makes permanent the increase in the unified credit and generation-skipping transfer tax exemption threshold. The 2025 exemption is $13.99 million for single filers and $27.98 million married filing jointly. In 2026, these numbers increase to $15 million and $30 million respectively.

What does this mean for charitable giving?
Purely estate tax-based incentives to give to charity continue to apply only to the ultra-wealthy, likely resulting in a continuation of the taxpayer behavior triggered by the TCJA. In other words, most people will give to charity during their lifetimes and in their estates for reasons other than a tax deduction.
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What can you do?
There is no guarantee that the estate tax exemption will stay high forever. As families work with their tax and estate planning advisors, many are viewing the next two years as an important window to plan ahead. The upshot of the new law is that high net-worth taxpayers now have more time to thoughtfully consider estate planning strategies, including charitable giving. For nonprofit organizations, this means continuing to focus on long-term planned giving strategies is wise.  ​

If you’ve recently retired, you may still be figuring out the ideal balance of activities. If you’ve been retired for several years, you might still be trying to figure it out! Time and again, research shows us that finding purpose is an essential component of a happy and satisfying retirement. Consider the following:

• A large-scale, longitudinal study used data from 13,770 older adults, finding that those with a higher sense of purpose at baseline were significantly less likely to develop unhealthy behaviors.
• Other research used a nationally representative panel of over 8,000 American adults and determined that, contrary to some beliefs, retirement can actually increase a person's sense of purpose.
• A cross-sectional study analyzed data from nearly 2,000 adults and found that sense of purpose was significantly associated with lower depression and anxiety in both retirees and non-retirees.

Indeed, retirement offers a unique opportunity for individuals to rediscover their sense of purpose beyond the confines of a traditional career. The Community Foundation’s team and charitable tools can play a pivotal role in this journey. Here’s how:

Check in on Tax Planning
For starters, the Community Foundation team can work with you and your tax advisors to be sure your charitable giving is reflected in your estate and financial plan to achieve the impact you’re seeking. Among other issues, we’ll help you and your advisors explore whether itemizing your tax deductions in certain years might save you money. You can “bunch” charitable donations into your donor-advised fund in higher-income years to exceed the itemization threshold, then support your favorite causes steadily over time from that fund. If you’re 70 ½ or older, we’ll also help evaluate whether tax-free transfers directly from your IRA - up to $108,000 in 2025 - to a designated, unrestricted, or field-of-interest fund at the Community Foundation would be an effective planning technique for your situation.

Involve the Next Generation
Many retirees have more time to include family members in their personal charitable giving activities. The Community Foundation team can work alongside you and your estate planning advisors to name children or grandchildren as advisors or successor advisors to your donor-advised fund and invite them to participate in site visits and educational events. This is a great way to strengthen family bonds while building a legacy of generosity across generations. Our team can help you identify ways to include children and grandchildren in site visits to favorite charities and participate in education sessions about community needs and the nonprofits that are making a difference for people who live in our region.

Build a Legacy
Many people update their estate plans just after they retire. As you work with your tax and estate planning advisors, consider incorporating a gift in your estate plan that will allow your charitable legacy to live on for generations. For example, many people name a fund at the Community Foundation as the beneficiary of their IRAs because of the significant tax advantages when compared with leaving the IRAs to heirs. The Community Foundation is happy to work with you and your advisors to establish a special fund to receive assets from your estate, whether from an IRA or other type of estate gift. The fund can be structured as a permanent endowment to address the community’s greatest needs far into the future, or even support the Community Foundation’s operations to ensure that philanthropy and stewardship continue to thrive for generations to come. You can also name your donor-advised fund as an estate beneficiary, and your children and grandchildren can serve as advisors to the fund so that they, in turn, can carry on the spirit of charitable giving in the family’s name.

We look forward to working with you throughout your retirement years to ensure that your community dreams are fulfilled through the power of charitable giving. Please reach out anytime.