Who We Are

Founded in 1996, the Knox County Community Foundation is a charitable organization formed to strengthen our community by awarding grants to local nonprofits, by bringing individuals together to address community needs, and by offering personalized charitable gift planning services to our donors.

The Foundation is made up of a collection of endowed funds established by donors from all walks of life and generally focused on charitable endeavors in our ­community. Because grants and scholarships are awarded based only on the income generated from the endowment, leaving the principal intact, donors have the ideal opportunity to help their community meet the needs we know about today while preparing for the challenges we are sure to face in the future.

Some donors establish funds that serve a particular charity (designated funds), some support different needs from year to year and want to remain involved in the identifying needs (donor-advised funds), some specify a particular area of need such as education (field-of-interest funds), and others create or give to what is called discretionary endowment (unrestricted funds), which allows the Foundation’s trustees to determine how it can best serve the community today and in the years to come. Field-of-interest and unrestricted funds provide the resources that make our Discretionary Grants Program possible. Discretionary grants typically are awarded based on a competitive process.

Today, we administer 66 charitable funds established by individuals, families, businesses, civic groups, and agencies that serve our community in a variety of ways. These funds allowed for grants and scholarships of nearly $108,000 in our most recent accounting year.

Our Foundation is represented locally by a board of trustees made up of civic-minded volunteers who live or work in Knox County. Their primary duty is to help people who share in the desire to give back connect with the charities they care about in a meaningful and lasting way and to make grantmaking decisions based on their first-hand knowledge of the community’s greatest needs at any given time.