In 2019, two pastors from my church approached me with a request: would I be willing to create a foundation or endowment to raise money for the Christian school our church operates? Without hesitation, I said yes. Both of my children had attended the school, and it had a profound impact on our family.

While I had experience serving on nonprofit boards, I had never started a nonprofit from scratch. This was entirely new territory. I spent the first year immersed in research—consulting legal experts, meeting with our church’s board of elders, and speaking with leaders from other schools that had established foundations.

Then, in October 2020, I was introduced to Ross Hjelseth. Ross had served as the head of schools at Life Christian Academy in Tacoma, WA, where he helped establish their foundation. His coaching and consulting played a crucial role in helping us navigate the process and make meaningful progress.

Having gone through this experience—and after receiving multiple inquiries from others looking to do something similar—I realized it would be valuable to record a podcast on the topic. My goal is to provide a roadmap for anyone considering starting a foundation, helping them move forward more efficiently.

In today’s episode, I’m joined by Ross to discuss the process, key steps, and timeline involved. While Qualified Charitable Distributions (QCDs) and Donor-Advised Funds (DAFs) are sufficient for most people’s charitable giving, for those interested in establishing a foundation, this conversation is for you. I hope you find it helpful.

Articles, Links & Resources:

Ross Hjelseth:  Hjelseth and Associates
Crosspoint Christian School Foundation
Gateway Fellowship

1. Understanding the Basics
2. • What is a foundation?
   • What is an endowment?
   • The importance of keeping the foundation separate from the church while maintaining a connection.
2. Initial Steps
3. • Forming an ad hoc committee to explore the idea.
   • Identifying and selecting initial board members.
   • Establishing governance structures and bylaws.
3. The Process of Establishing the Foundation
4. • Expected timeline from inception to full operational status.
   • Key documents required, including:
   • • Articles of Incorporation
     • Bylaws
     • Endowment Fund Policy
     • Investment Policy Statement
     • Fund Distribution Policy
     • 501(c)(3) application (Form 1023)
   • Legal and compliance considerations.
4. Building the Right Team
5. • Hiring a consultant (e.g., Ross’s role in our process).
   • Engaging an attorney for legal structuring and compliance.
   • Partnering with a CPA specializing in nonprofit organizations.
   • Hiring an Investment advisor who can manage investments
5. Fundraising and Financial Management
6. • The importance of securing 501(c)(3) status before launching fundraising efforts.
   • Developing a giving calendar and participating in fundraising events.
   • Managing endowment investments.
   • Donor Relations
   • Moves Management
6. Operational Framework and Governance
7. • Establishing board structure and church oversight.
   • Monthly board meetings
   • Defining financial policies and accountability measures.
     -Policies created: Undesignated funds, sponsoring events, financial reserves policy, investment policy, Endowment Fund Policy
   • Bylaws including Article 1 the foundation board & officers
   • Washington State Charitable Ogrinization Registration
   • IRS 1023 application for recognition of exemption
   • Director and Officer insurance
   • Creating a culture of donor appreciation and engagement.
   • Creating committees:
     Marketing and Communications committee
     Investment & Finance committee
     Development & Fundraising

Our Timeline:

It is worth noting that Covid happened in the midst of this process which slowed everything down.

• Month 1:

  • Hold an initial meeting with trusted advisors and community leaders.
  • Begin research and stakeholder outreach.

• Months 1–18:

  • Engage with similar foundations, legal/financial advisors, and community groups for insights.

• Month 19:

  • Consult with an expert to refine your strategy.

• Month 20:

  • Form an ad hoc committee that will evolve into your board of directors.

• Month 22:

  • Conduct the first official board meeting and elect officers.

• Month 24:

  • Submit your tax-exempt status application (e.g., IRS 1023 for 501(c)(3) status).

• Month 28:

  • Upon receiving tax-exempt status, officially launch and begin fundraising.

Transcript:

448 How To Set Up A Foundation And Endowment For Your Christian School

Announcer: Welcome back America to Sound Retirement Radio, where we bring you concepts, ideas, and strategies designed to help you achieve clarity, confidence, and freedom as you prepare for and transition through retirement. And now, here is your host, Jason Parker.

Jason Parker: America, so glad to have you joining me for episode number 448.

The title is, How to Set Up a Foundation and Endowment. for your Christian school. But before we get into today’s episode, I like to start the day by renewing our mind, and I’ve got a verse here for us from Proverbs 22, 6. Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it.

And then something fun for the grandkids. Why do birds fly north in the spring? Because it’s way faster than walking. What do you say to a nervous flower? Don’t worry, bud. Everything’s going to be blooming great. In 2019, two pastors from my church approached me with a request. Would I be willing to create a foundation or endowment to raise money for the Christian school that our church operates?

And without hesitation, I said, yes, both of my children had attended the school and it had a profound impact on our family. While I had experienced serving on nonprofit boards, I had never started a nonprofit from scratch. This was entirely new territory, and I spent the first year immersed in research, consulting legal experts, meeting with our church’s board of elders, and speaking with leaders from other schools that had established foundations.

Then in October 2020, I was introduced to Ross Jelseth. Ross had served as the head of schools at Life Christian Academy in Tacoma, Washington, where he helped them establish their foundation. His coaching and consulting played a crucial role in helping us navigate the process and make meaningful progress.

Having gone through this experience, and after receiving multiple inquiries from others looking to do something similar, I realized it would be really valuable to record a podcast on the topic. My goal is to provide a roadmap for anyone that’s considering starting a foundation. Helping them move forward more efficiently.

So in today’s podcast, I’m joined by Ross to discuss the process, the key steps, and the timeline involved. While qualified charitable distributions and donor advised funds are sufficient for most people’s charitable giving. For those of you that are interested in establishing a foundation, this conversation is for you.

I hope you find it helpful. It is my good fortune. to have my friend Ross Gelseth joining us on the podcast today. Ross, welcome to Sound Retirement Radio.

Ross Hjelseth: Great to be with you, Jason. I’m excited about the opportunity.

Jason Parker: Me too. You and I it’s because of you and your expertise and your consultation that we were able to start this foundation for the Christian school where my kids attend and where my son graduated from, and my daughter’s going to be a senior next year.

And just really exciting to me to think that the work that we’re doing is going to help more kids in our community have a Christian education. And we’re also, one of the things that was important when we were developing this foundation was to be able to honor our teachers. Teachers compared to the public schools, they really have, they give up a lot in order to teach a Christian education.

And one of the things I know is that people love our teachers and the teachers love the kids. And so we just we want to honor them and we want to attract great teachers and we want to keep them around once we find them. So I’m excited that you and I got to go on down this path together.

You helped us create the foundation. I’ve had people reaching out to me saying, Hey, we run a Christian school, how can we go about doing something similar? What I, the reason I asked you to be on here today is I want to help our listeners understand if they’re interested in creating a find a foundation, a 501c3, what’s the process of doing that?

What’s the timeline to be expected? And I thought just a great initial question for you would be what is a foundation, what is endowment?

Ross Hjelseth: As you just indicated, Jason, a foundation is a 501c3 status granted after an application has been submitted. And part of that paperwork that submitted is what is the purpose of the foundation.

Once granted, I use the analogy that a foundation is the structure, which includes policy and procedure. Which includes bylaws, which includes amendments, which includes policy related to the receiving of funds, policy as to the purpose of the funds, policy as to the investment of the funds, and then finally, policy as to the distribution of the earnings of the fund.

You could also use the analogy of the foundation. Is a house in which then you can place, organizations can place endowment funds. So once those funds are within the foundation, those funds are monitored by a board of directors that oversee that foundation. And part of what that includes, Jason, is an expertise level that a lot of other fundraising for nonprofits, including Christian schools.

It doesn’t have to be overseeing to that detail because it’s in and out money, it’s money that’s raised through auctions or golf tournaments or annual funds or walkathons, whatever. Those monies quite typically simply go into a budget, they help support budget, and at the end of the fiscal year, they’re spent.

Foundations on the other hand, we’re talking long term investment of the money, long term return on the money. Thank you. Yeah,

Jason Parker: one of the things that, and you’ve really helped our, our help us clarify this idea with the people that are giving to the foundation now is that once that money gets an endowment fund, it’s really never spent.

The the potential of 5 percent of the value of the funds can be, directed back to the school, but these are gifts that really are made into perpetuity. It’s money that’s given, it’s invested, And then up to 5 percent of the value of the funds are go back to the teachers and the school and the students to provide more opportunities.

So it’s really an amazing thing to think about that you make a gift one time and that money continues to grow and work for you over time. But one of the things I thought I’d touch on here, Ross says, we’re talking about the formation. So the way that this originally came to be was. Pastor Tom and Pastor Dave had come to me after visiting another school in Washington who had a foundation and they said, Jason, this seems like something we should be doing for our school.

And they asked me if I would be interested in helping to spearhead the project. And of course, at the time I knew nothing about creating a foundation or an endowment. But as we went through that planning process, one of the things that Tom and Dave said was important to them is that they wanted. The foundation to be a separate 501c3, separate from the church and separate from the school.

And they wanted a separate board of directors to oversee that. And part of the reason for that is we, this Christian school tends, happens to be the largest Christian school in this community. And they really wanted to make sure that all of the churches in our community felt like this was something that everybody could get on board with.

This wasn’t about one church. And one pot of money, this was like, Hey, we want everybody in the community to participate in this, to create more opportunities for kids that want a Christian education in our community. And I thought that was really a great vision on their part to want that. And then in our bylaws, we actually require that we have more than one church represented by the board of directors so that we have, multiple churches in our community.

represented. And I know that was important too, so that we have that just voices from other churches coming together to create that structure. And so that it has its own board of directors, its own governance. It’s not controlled by the school. It’s not controlled by the church. It’s this individual, the separate group of people that come together to steward these resources.

I thought that was a really great idea on their part.

Ross Hjelseth: Yes. And compared to the contrary, Option. The contrary option for some schools is they create an endowment fund that’s a part of the existing 501 c three of the school, or it could be a non profit humane society, wherever the case might be the difference between that option of simply creating endowment and letting somebody manage it and creating a foundation.

Is it the foundation is a much more significant structure, but it also has more significant guidelines. It also has a level of expertise that gets built into it by the board member, because there’s some they’re focusing on one. aspect of fund development called endowment. And so they’re not at the same time thinking we’re going to approve this budget and that budget and all these other things like a school board would do if they have an endowment fund or a nonprofit.

So by creating a foundation, what your ministry created there was its own organization that can give. significantly positive report, not only to how they’ve invested the money, but that at every turn, the I’s are being dotted and the T’s are being crossed. The details are all being covered. So that the foundation can give significant report of confidence back to donors should Jesus Terry, as long as the foundation sustains itself.

So it’s a much better, in my opinion, structure. And when you mentioned Pastor Tom and Pastor Dave talking about what they were aspiring to help create, they were definitely on the right path, in my opinion.

Jason Parker: Yeah, it’s really been good. So let’s talk about the initial steps. The very first thing the very first thing was that lunch with Pastor Tom and Dave, where they said we want to figure this out.

We didn’t know what we were doing and we didn’t know how to get going. So the first this was 2019. And there were meetings with the church board of elders. There were meetings with attorneys. There was a lot of calls that I was making to other foundations, endowments, and Christian schools to try to understand what they had created.

But we didn’t really have a blueprint. And then one of the attorneys that was helping us said, Hey, I know this Christian school, not far from you guys. And there’s this guy, Ross, that helped them start a foundation. And so that, when that relationship came to be, when you and I met, I think it was October of 2020.

Then things really picked up steam. So from April of 2019 to October of 2020, there was just all this research being done, but being able to find somebody that had already done this with their Christian school, it just made a huge difference for us to be able to fast track things and really start making progress.

And one of the very first things you had us do was to form an ad hoc committee to explore the idea of foundation and endowment. You want to talk for a minute just to, why did we form the ad hoc committee?

Ross Hjelseth: The finished product you wanted, and I wanted to be sure that the finished product would be a foundation for Gateway Christian Schools, Crosspoint Christian, Gateway Fellowship and Crosspoint Christian Schools.

So in that regard, the committee began the research into a foundation structure, its impact on the ministry, also its processes. It’s board dynamics, all those different types of things. The ad hoc committee, and I remember when Heidi Abrams called me, that was my initial phone contact. And I was so happy that she had legal expertise.

Because part of this process in creating a 5013, It’s a legal process that you go through and it’s bound up by guidelines or foundations. In our early conversations, your ad hoc committee, I remember those meetings via Zoom and those meetings were all about what do we need to get pulled together, what research needs to be done, and we could personalize it back to your school and your church community, which sponsored a school.

And part of the process is, and I want to emphasize this point, ministries like Gateway Fellowship are multifaceted, and they have their board that oversees the church. Gateway Fellowship, under Pastor Duchaman’s leadership, decided to keep Christian education alive on the peninsula. by creating Crosspoint Christian School.

That’s an organization. That’s a ministry within Gateway Fellowships Ministry. Adding a foundation adds another ministry, so to speak, to fit within what they’re doing. Each piece of a ministry, we want to be pleasing to God, and we also want it to be of structure and sustenance that it’s going to be done well.

And your ad hoc committee did very good work in terms of looking at all the potential details. In order to make this happen, and once it happens, make it move forward, help it move forward.

Jason Parker: Yeah, and I think that’s, the purpose of that ad hoc committee as I remember it was, do we have people that are interested in this vision, that are interested in this mission?

Are there people who are saying, they’re helping us identify whether or not Creating a foundation was something that we should continue to pursue. And I have to tell you, Ross, I was skeptical, when Melissa and I, the principal of the school at the time, we got together. We identified a handful of people, maybe 10 people or so that we thought might be, maybe there’s 15 people that we thought might be good.

potential people that would be interested in helping to create a foundation. And yeah, I just know how busy everybody is. And so we sat down, Melissa and I sat down, we interviewed people and we asked them and we told them about what we were doing and asked them to think about it and pray on it and let us know if it’s something that they’d be interested in helping us pursue.

And it was incredible. How many people said, yes, how many people were excited about that opportunity? And I didn’t think that was going to be the case because a lot of times when you’re looking for people to volunteer their time to help with things, it’s hard to find people that are willing to say yes, because everybody’s so stretched for time.

So I just remember thinking how incredible it was that the people that did say yes. And then many of people that helped form that ad hoc committee went on to become the initial board of directors for the foundation. And yeah, so it just, it was neat to get to interview people, get to see how people say yes to the opportunity and then to continue to move things along.

And it’s, it has been a process it was 2019 that we started and that had that first conversation and I wrote down a timeline of events here. Let’s see. It was, february of 2022 that we submitted our application for 501c3 status, July of 2022 that the IRS approved that 501c3 status.

And we didn’t start raising funds until after we had received that. Approval by the IRS. Here we are 2025, but this whole thing started really with a conversation in 2019. And the reason I say that is because I want to give, we’ve, I’ve had people reaching out to me asking, Hey, how did you do this?

And how did you go about it? And I just want them to realize this isn’t necessarily something you do. You start and then it’s done, two weeks later there, it takes a little bit of time to get everything created, but once you do now, like you were saying at the beginning of our conversation, before I hit record.

Once you start this process, the, you get that momentum going and now things are really starting to get going, but okay. So we formed the ad hoc committee. We created many of the ad hoc members became the initial board and the purpose of the board was to create the bylaws, the articles of incorporation, the endowment fund policy, the investment policy, the fund distribution policy.

We have the 501c3 application. We had to find of course, one of our board members is an attorney. And so she has been instrumental in helping get this going. We had to find a CPA that specialized in foundations and endowments so that they could help us. Anything you want to talk about there just in, in terms of that process, all of the, without you, Ross, frankly, because again, we were starting with a blank slate.

We didn’t really know what we were doing because you had already gone through the process of creating articles of incorporation and bylaws and endowment fund policy. You really helped guide our board on what that needed to look like. But do you have any thoughts about that process?

Ross Hjelseth: That process is critical to the future of anything that’s going to happen and everything that’s going to happen within a foundation in its future.

If we think, Jason, and for our listening audience, think about the significance of endowment. Endowment is long term funding with long term return on investment with long term distribution. In order for anything to be long term, It’s got to be built. I’m reminded of in the book of Matthew, Jesus, one of the parables he speaks to, I think it’s Matthew 7, 24 to 27.

He speaks about the parable of the two builders. One builder builds a house on a sinking sand. One builder builds one on a solid rock. In both cases, storms come. And in organizations, here we are, 2025, storms come. And in organizations, here we are, 2025, storms come. Not everything’s perfect. There, here’s a season when all of a sudden the return on investment isn’t as good or the economy turns and different types of dynamics can take place.

Leadership changes within the ministry, within the school, board members change. However, back to Matthew 7, the storms came to both builders. The house that stood was the one that was built on the rock, which is faith in Jesus. You can use that analogy, at least I can, to also say in building in a foundation, we want to make sure that the structure is rock solid for two purposes.

One that’s the beginning only, but the beginning is what we can speak to when we do it well, when we start to talk to prospective donors in the faith community. with a nonprofit community, whatever people are representing, and we can do so with confidence. Why? Because we know we’ve got it all the eyes.

We crossed the T’s. We’ve got the paperwork in place. We’ve got the process in place. With process, for example, bylaws, there’s really nothing that can go wrong that boards can do. All they have to do is follow the bylaws. Follow all the structure, follow the process, been approved. And it’s a vital part of creating a foundation is taking the time to do it well.

With the ad hoc committee, with the initial board, creating, your people spent quite a bit of time. Creating policy and studying policy and then approving. How does this sound? How does that sound? Will this work for us? Because part of what we have going here and what you had going, you had a dynamic, which a church would need to fund itself, a school that needed to fund itself.

So think this lot, both of them on any given week are at maybe asking for money to support the school. How do you fit and ask for endowment into those other two organizations that are asking for financial support. There’s a place for it, but it’s got to be done well.

Jason Parker: Yeah.

Ross Hjelseth: And creating it well, I think, gives opportunity to do it well.

Jason Parker: Yeah. And I think that’s the expectation I would want to set for people is, again, this is a process, it’s work and there are people that have gone before that can lead you and guide you and say, okay, you need the articles of incorporation. You need the bylaws, the endowment fund policy, the investment fund policy, the fund distribution policy.

The. There’s things that you’re going to learn along the way. How much money are we going to keep in cash reserves versus how much are we going to invest? Just all this work that needs to be done initially, I think, you’re on the right path when you see the right people coming together and that’s the next.

Part of this conversation is building the right team. So the hoc committee and people that we thought would be a good fit for that. And then inviting those people to be on the board of directors. And, some of the people said no when we were asking for the ad hoc committee and the board of directors, not everybody said yes.

Go ahead and speak to that for a minute because sometimes it can feel disheartening when you think, oh, this person would be great to be a board member on a committee but they tell you no. So what are your thoughts about that?

Ross Hjelseth: Years ago I came across a, an expression that I think covers what you just, you to it.

And the expression work done in God’s way wi money provision. It’s also in terms of people provision. And if you to put together an effective nonprofit board, you need people that believe in the organization or the potential. And, for example, when you’re starting a foundation, You need people that have an eye and a passion and excitement for creating a foundation in which to work with and distribute money from endowments.

Not everybody has that passion. Not everybody feels like that’s a part of their vision. But in putting together a board, also need a diverse array of expertise that can come together. So when you reference your first board. I remember you had people with various qualities and backgrounds and that’s part of what helps make for a successful board.

But that process of finding the board and then Having that board integrate their thoughts with, in some case, the founding organization, like Gateway Fellowship. I remember conversations with one evening driving up to Falls Bowl, having a meeting with the church board, and explaining the vision for this and what you had done to that point in time.

The same is true with the organization that you’re going to distribute the funds to cross point Christian schools, the need for continued communication with somebody from the school that knows here’s what this group of people is aspiring to do. They’re aspiring to help us. How can we help them? How can we provide the information that a foundation board needs to know what the real needs are within the school and all those dynamics.

So part of it is getting all the pieces to come together and synchronize in unity. The biblical model for God’s work is unity. It’s unity, it’s together, teamwork.

Jason Parker: Yeah. And we have nine people on our board it’s pretty robust. And just again, thinking of this idea of getting nine people together once a month to continue making progress and move the ball forward on this is pretty cool.

So there were key people that we. hired in order to make this happen. And of course you were one of them. I really attribute the success that we’ve had to us finding you because until we found you, we were just in kind of research mode, but you gave us the ability to get out of research mode and actually start making progress.

So that was number one. Number two, we were very fortunate because one of the, one of the ad hoc members was also legal counsel for the church and became one of our board members. And so we had that legal expertise, which was critical. She’s amazing. Then because of her, we also had a relationship with a CPA that specialized in tax planning for nonprofit entities.

So you need to have a CPA. And then this one actually surprised me. I own an investment advisory firm, but I don’t want any conflicts of interest between what we do and our foundation. My firm does not manage investments for the foundation. That’s very intentional. So we put out this request for a bid or request for proposal from other investment advisors to try to find people that would work with us initially to, once we had funds, that they would help us invest that money.

And Ross, I was surprised that was so difficult to find an investment advisor that would, Manage investments for us. In fact, just about everybody that we met with told us no because, starting out we didn’t have any money and they wanted us to have at least a million dollars before they would invest.

And but that’s one of the pieces of the puzzle because most board members are not investment experts and you want somebody that can help you, guide you based on the investment policy statement that your board puts together. We ended up finally finding a solution there, but again, it was just a little bit surprising to me that it wasn’t easier because we couldn’t meet the minimums that people were looking for.

Ross Hjelseth: One of the things that helps organizations inspire, do something like this, creating a foundation to help fund their mission. Is when you talk about expertise and people and policy becomes your friend, because when you communicate, for example, to organizations that might consider in that being your investment firm.

Yes, you spoke to what you didn’t have. What you did have. You had strong vision. You had mission. You also had policy that you’ve been developing. And when you communicate with potential investment firms, for them to know that you’ve created the structure, you’ve created the bylaws, you’ve created whatever it’s going to all the documentations.

That helps because you know what these people are serious. These people are going to make this happen. And sure enough, you found somebody that said, you know what we’ll take you and we’ll work with you. And over time, they in faith believe that it was going to be good. And that’s what’s happened.

They also over time believe that their return of their investment. Would get better because the asset portfolio would get larger and it would be worth their while to say, yes, we’ll be your investment firm. So they too, in some ways in faith said, you know what? Yep. We’ll do it for you.

Jason Parker: Yeah,

Ross Hjelseth: but you’re right.

It’s not easy.

Jason Parker: No, yeah, we just had people tell us no all along the way, but the next piece is the fundraising in the financial management, and this has been so cool for me just to see, some of the people that have reached out to us, they never had kids that went to Christian education, but we just, we have people.

literally that are finding us and saying, Hey, we heard about what you’re doing. We love seeing the results and, we want to support this ministry. And so that’s been really cool for me, from my perspective, just to see. People that want more Christian education in our community want kids to have this opportunity.

They want to honor the teachers that are investing their time into the kids. And but talk to me for a minute about donor relations, moves management it’s just the process of getting the word out there to tell people, Hey, this is what we’re doing and finding out if they would be interested in helping to promote it or support it.

Ross Hjelseth: Certainly. As we’ve talked, we’ve discussed for the first portion of the day, we talked about all the processes. We’ve talked about the creating of the documents and all those things. Those help prepare the table, so to speak, for everybody to sit down and let’s have a meal now. Lots of prep.

Think about Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving, a woman spends hours preparing. And these 11, 12, 14 people sit down and within 20 minutes, they consume it, but they sit down with the anticipation. This is going to be great. And that’s a lot of what we’ve discussed today has been the creation of all the dynamics to move to launch it and move it forward.

So endowment fits. Within the fundraising paradigm, it does not fit for everybody. However, the term moves management simply means that somebody manages a donor’s moves. And if we think the thought that Gateway Christian Schools or XYZ organization, they have a donor population that supports, whether it be a walkathon or an auction, whatever the case might be.

That organization depends on those dollars that come in. However, MOVES refers to what is that donor’s next donation? What is their next donation? And studied well, we start to notice trends. Those of us who are in the fundraising. And those trends start to indicate That this person’s on a path, they like the performing arts, their children are in the elementary school, they’re going to be there for a while, these people like the arts, and so on.

So with that being the case, Moves Management, the people that are fundraising for an organization, help the donors realize that at some point in time, in addition to supporting an annual budget, like a school has or a non profit has, Why don’t we consider supporting the long term future of the organization?

That’s when the endowment ask comes in. It doesn’t have to take away from the school’s asks or the organization’s ask, non profit. Instead, it becomes another option for donors to consider. And well done. Here’s how it goes. So the fundraising, we know Mr and Mrs Johnson, that you’ve been supporting our organization for the past five years.

We appreciate that. And we value your support moving forward. In addition, we feel like we want to share with you a vision for long term sustainability. Because in fact, you’ve been supporting us for the period of years and we’ve got a plan in place to build endowment and endowment becomes a great investment on your part because we’re not going to spend that money, we’re going to invest it.

So your dollars are going to be long term impactful. You are going to impact the mission of our organization long term. So it becomes a relatively easy ask to make. When it’s expressed in that way, we’re not saying instead of we’re saying alongside of your other support to the organization. Would you consider and done?

Fundraising becomes a win for every aspect of the organization. The short term, which is budget operations for a year, but long term in doubt.

Jason Parker: Yeah. And I

Ross Hjelseth: can’t tell, I can’t tell you how many times, for example, in our foundation, in fact, March 7th, we have our endowment awards assembly. And this year our Life Christian foundation will disperse 210, 000.

Wow. That is up 65, 000 from last year.

Jason Parker: Wow.

Ross Hjelseth: Next year, it’ll be 250, 000 plus. Why? Because the asset portfolio has increased and over time. The distribution amount keeps increasing. Donors smile when they see that the funds have been stewarded well and invested well by their Organization that the funds go to.

Jason Parker: Yeah. And I remember

Ross Hjelseth: When,

Jason Parker: as we were in the process of getting things started, you invited us to one of those events. And we got to hear what I thought was really cool. It was one of the students, I think she was a senior at the time and she had been receiving scholarships from your endowment funds, and she just talked about what an impact it had made on her.

To have that opportunity that she wouldn’t have had otherwise. And I just thought, man, that is so cool to hear a a young girl a young woman standing there talking about the impact that it made in her life. And I thought that was really pretty amazing. The next thing I wanted to talk to you about is just the operational framework and the governance.

We’ve got this board of directors, we’ve got a cadence for regular meetings. And I know it seems like we meet more often than your board does, but I think that’s partly because we’re still. There’s still a lot of work to do. So we’re meeting on a monthly basis. There’s policies there’s accountability.

There’s undesignated fund policies. There’s policies around sponsoring events. There’s financial reserve policies. There’s investment policies. There’s an endowment fund policy. This is the work that needs to go into formation, the creation of the fund. There have been times when we’ve had to modify the.

So we’ve had to make some adjustments there over time as we’ve learned. We’ve got the ongoing paperwork with the IRS and the state of Washington that requires us, so there’s just, there’s work. And then we’ve got committees people, not just the board members, but we also have people on committee and each one of these different boards, but.

So I want to talk for a minute about this, just the operational framework and the governance. But one of the things I wanted to go back to just real quickly, you talked about, it doesn’t have to be an either or, when we have been doing events for the foundation we always say, look, support your church first and foremost, that’s your that’s what we want to see happen is that churches are.

Thriving. Second, we want to see the school do really well, and parents that have their kids there, they see it firsthand. , they don’t need any convincing. A lot of them came from different situations and they see how good this environment is, and they’re like, yes we want more of this in the world.

We want more of this in our community. So once the church has been supported, once the school’s been supported, then if people. Want to give above and beyond that’s really where I see the foundation coming in. It’s not something that we’re asking them to stop doing one thing to do another.

It’s just, there are people that see the benefits of our, that it’s happened in people’s kids lives. And the community in the country, as a result of, just giving these people, these kids, this opportunity to go to school and a place where they learn that they were created for purpose on purpose.

It’s just, yeah, it’s just really been encouraging, but talk, talk for a minute about just the operational framework and the governance that goes into the ongoing management of a foundation and endowment.

Ross Hjelseth: First of all, governance. Becomes the guideline under which and through which a board will accomplish the mission of the organization.

So it’s a high priority that governance is put in place and as you referred to periodically, governance will be adjusted with amendments to bylaws and so on. But with that, the policy calls for everything from, for example, within a structure, Everything from what the board should represent, what the mission of the organization is, what the function of the investment part of the funds, what does that serve, the distribution, all of that becomes the guidelines for the board.

And I want to interject this at this point. You have done this in your organization very well, all with volunteers. And the thing that’s been very helpful in your part, and I would encourage anyone who’s considering this possibility of starting a foundation to raise endowment funds to consider the importance of integrating the foundation within the mission of the mother organization, whether it is a nonprofit that someone’s representing or working with or wants to, or it’s a ministry, Whatever the 501c3 status is of the mother organization, the sponsoring organization, the integration of the foundation board with members of that sponsoring organization.

And so if you look at the community, for example, the Fallsville, Silverdale, Bremerton community, there are lots of nonprofits and any of those nonprofits could establish, could want to establish an endowment or establish a foundation. The key part is to integrate it within the organization. It’s not a separate entity in terms of its relational component.

It’s separate in terms of it has its bylaws and its structure, which is great, but it also needs to be integrated within the community of the nonprofit that it serves. So your board has been very intentional. About sustaining communication with your sponsoring organization, gateway Fellowship, and with the personnel of the school, which is a part of the ministry, and that’s a key part of what the operational side of things, along with the bylaws and the structure.

Help make happen.

Jason Parker: Yeah. Yeah. I had the opportunity to go to some some training, nonprofit training last year, and I was sharing with them that, our board is completely volunteer and every, everybody there was just floored by that. They couldn’t believe that wow you have all these people doing all this work and everybody’s doing it for.

No compensation. It’s yeah, that’s what happened. That’s, I guess I didn’t realize that was unusual. That’s just what we expected. And in fact as as our board is putting together a budget every year, one of the things we ask is that The board members contribute to that budget.

We want to really anybody that gives to the foundation, we want that money to go to its primary purpose. And so if there’s a budget where money needs to be spent, we try to have the board members cover that budget so that donors that are out there that are giving that they’re not having to think that part of their donations are going to cover the the cost of operating and running this operation.

Cause it’s an operation and it has expenses.

Ross Hjelseth: There’s a What you just spoke to is an integral part of having a chance for success is finding the right people that are willing to bring together to a board their expertise and share it best done, for example, you’ve already referenced some of the people you have on the founding board, an attorney, a CPA, a financial investment person like yourself, a marketing person, you’ve got people that have other career paths, You have parents from school, you have non parents, whatever the case might be, people involved in the ministry.

For example, I felt like in your case, because of the fact that the church wanted to help, wanted to create this foundation, while having Pastor Dave serve on the board initially was genius, because his involvement, he could give good report consistently back to the church. This is what’s happening.

This is what’s being discussed. This is what’s being approved. This is what’s being considered. All of those types of things soothe, so to speak. Any degree of anxiety that might develop over what are they going to do? And what will this look like? Having the pieces that come together within the boardroom is a blessing.

And in your case, that’s exactly what happened and continues to happen.

Jason Parker: Yeah. It’s been good. And again, the reason for wanting to do this podcast is just so that anybody that’s thinking about starting a foundation or an endowment for their own Christian school, rather than you and I having to jump on phone calls with these people and try to walk them through it, just to give them a framework or some ideas on what to expect as they’re heading down this path.

Because you and I have had the opportunity to work together now for several years and you were again, instrumental in helping this all come together. Is there anything that stands out to you or anything, you’ve been involved in foundation endowment a lot longer than me, anything that you just want to make sure people understand as they’re heading down this path?

Ross Hjelseth: The one thing that I would want people to be aware of is this is in some cases, creating endowment, creating a foundation is new territory for a lot of people. If you ask people on the street, what’s a foundation’s purpose, what are they might be thinking about the foundation for a house. The foundation for a house is much more frequently referenced than a foundation for raising money.

So the story needs to be told. And after a foundation is created or an endowment fund is created, the story needs to be told to the point of understanding on the part of people. I can’t tell you even to this day and we’re celebrating the 20th anniversary of our foundation this year. Some people still need clarification as what’s the foundation, what’s the endowment, what’s the difference?

As I use the analogy, the foundation is the structure, legal structure. The endowment are the various funds that are designated that people can give to. Once you get those pieces in place, so to speak, then it really becomes a matter of continually communicating, promoting, helping people understand.

Once they do, the blessings come. We’re 20 years into our situation now, and now we have people that every year contribute without even be asking. Why? Because they’re in the habit. They understand they’ve gotten good reports for 17 years from us. So they want to keep adding to an endowment and people have different passions in terms of what they give towards.

So I would also offer this up is if an organization is going to create a foundation, they’re going to raise money for endowment. offer a variety of funds that people can choose from to give to the gel set family white might want to give to a stem program or might want to give to it their various aspects of a mission the parker family to use our two families jason Might want to give something different by having within the menu, so to speak, visualize walking into a restaurant.

You’re gonna look at a menu. What are you gonna have to eat? One chooses one thing. One chooses something different. The point is offering a variety of options for people to give towards. Helps people nod their head up and down. Yes. We want to give.

Jason Parker: So if you want to give to support students and scholarships and tuition assistance, or if you want to support the teachers, or if you want to support science, technology, engineering, math, if you want to support the arts, if you want to support athletics yeah, you’re right.

We create these different funds, endowment funds that people can give to so that. If they’re really passionate about the sports program, then, they can make sure that continues to receive funding for generations. And that’s the thing I love about endowment, Ross is you give once and it just, that money continues to work for generations.

It’s amazing.

Ross Hjelseth: And the other part that I want to touch on just briefly, part of moves management, if you think this thought that we sustain the relationship with a given donor, husband and wife. Eventually, they get to the point where they plan their estate and not a large percentage of people actually get to the process of creating an estate plan, a will, a trust, whatever their choice might be.

But when they do, studies have shown that donors who give to a given ministry or a nonprofit, stewarded, they will quite likely leave a percentage of their estate plan. to that same endowment fund. So if they’ve been funding the fine arts or if they’ve been funding some aspect of the mission of an organization of a school or a nonprofit, quite likely, and studies show that in many cases, the gift that they will leave as a part of their estate plan might very well be in many cases.

exceeds what they’ve given during their lifetime.

Jason Parker: Wow. And and as you say that we’ve, I’ve actually had a conversation with at least two people that have said, Hey, we changed our will. And we just want you to know that the foundation is going to be a part of it. And I, again, to me, that’s just amazing.

These people are, these are not, it’s just it’s been a really amazing experience to see what motivates people and where they come from and why they’re doing it.

Ross Hjelseth: Yeah. Next week, I will have lunch. with a couple that both formerly worked within our ministry at Life Center and they have no children, so they have no heirs and they have already designated their entire estate to go to our foundation to help fund programs in the church and to help fund programs in the school.

And that’s simply what they want to do with their estate. That gift. Will be larger quite likely much larger than anything they’ve given during their lifetime

Jason Parker: Oh, yeah

Ross Hjelseth: And so all of a sudden the asset balance within the organization called your foundation Just got a huge push down the road so to speak out of a plan gift But there again it speaks to the long term value of endowment because people want to give to something that They don’t want you to buy new windows for the building.

They want you to spend it on something that’s going to extend the mission of the organization and support the mission that they supported during their lifetime, so to speak. Windows are important, but people are way more important than windows.

Jason Parker: Yeah.

Ross Hjelseth: In my opinion.

Jason Parker: Like I say, it’s been a, it’s it’s been a lot of work, but the reward has been pretty incredible.

And for us, we just last year, we made our first distribution back to the school and this year now we’ve made our second distribution back to the school. And so it’s it’s fun to start seeing that the planting of the seeds have taken root and now they’re starting to grow and yeah, it’s just, it’s really been a great.

And it’s worth it, the good things they do take work and they can they can not always be easy, they can be challenging, but they’re worth it. It’s worth it. And so I would encourage people, anybody that’s thinking about going down this path just to, go into it knowing that there, there’s there’s a time commitment.

There’s a work commitment to not give up and just keep making progress, inch by inch life, inch by inch life is a cinch, right?

Ross Hjelseth: Hey, there you go.

Jason Parker: Ross, thanks. I appreciate you taking the time to be on the show with me today. And for, I should also let people know you and I are in a, I’m in a coaching relationship with you.

You and I meet on a regular basis and you’ve written a book, um, with years of coaching behind it, but do you want to tell people if anybody’s interested in learning more about you and the work that you do, how they can find out more about that? In

Ross Hjelseth: 2019, I started a consulting and a coaching organization, and my goal is simply to serve people as to where, what it is they need.

So you referenced coaching sessions, one on one, which you and I have been doing for four years. Thank you. And secondly, organizational consulting, everything from strategic plans to business plans. To board dynamics, to study of financial projections, financial records, all those different types of things.

And sometimes it’s a growth plan, a business growth plan that I help create for people. Sometimes it’s an organizational strategic study as to adding a capital campaign to their efforts to build a new, whatchamacallit, so to speak. So a variety of different things that could include, but I appreciate the reference.

It’s jelsethassociates. com.

Jason Parker: And since that’s such an easy name to say, why don’t you how is that spelled?

Ross Hjelseth: That’s H J E L S E T H associates. com.

Jason Parker: Okay. Thanks a lot, Ross. Appreciate you being here.

Ross Hjelseth: Yeah, thank you very much for the opportunity. I just have great passion for building endowment. It lasts, it sustains anything else that competes with it.

And so your group has done yeoman’s work, Jason, and you’re living testimony to the power of what God’s people can do when you come together with a shared vision and you agree to keep working together to make it happen. Your group has done great work.

Jason Parker: It’s been fun. Awesome. Thanks. It’s

Ross Hjelseth: possible and it’s possible for others.

Jason Parker: Yes. It’s possible for others. That’s the important thing. All right. Take care. Thank you much. Alright, bye-bye.

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