Pat and the late O.C. Boldt (who passed away last summer), didn’t have to speculate about the impact of giving for the long-term.

“We know because we’ve experienced it,” Pat said.

When O.C.’s mother died in 1988, they started the Dorothy A. Boldt Fund for Mt. Olive Lutheran Church, one of four charitable funds they have within the Community Foundation. It was started with gifts totaling $20,000, has awarded more than $36,000 in grants to his mother’s church over 26 years, and still has assets of $28,000.

That’s the lasting support that comes with an endowment fund.

“It’s an ongoing need,” the late O.C. said in a 2015 interview. They set up the fund so 25% of the available grant money supports services for shut-ins (Dorothy Boldt was a stroke victim) and the rest for the church to use as needed.

Before the Community Foundation, O.C. said, there was no reliable way to make a gift for long into the future and know your intentions would be honored. He was a founding board member 29 years ago and vice president and board chair early on.

“The Community Foundation is a wonderful organization in the sense of the stability – that it will be there long after you’re gone,” he said.

The Foundation also helps people keep informed of needs in the community, Pat added.

Despite all that the Boldts have given to charity, the gift that stood out for O.C. was a $100 annual pledge to their church when his take-home pay was $55 a week. Giving two weeks’ pay was a sacrifice.

“You learn to take what you give off the top, instead of waiting until you have something left over,” Pat said.

The largest of the Boldts’ funds is a family fund used to support higher education and general charitable giving, with the rest designated to support particular nonprofits. They also are Himebaugh Legacy Circle members, indicating they have arranged an estate gift to the Community Foundation.

“Over the years, you learn the joy of giving,” O.C. said, in an interview before he died. “It gets to be an addiction.”

They see the main motivation for people to give as making their community a better place in which to live and work.

“Whether it’s the church or the Y or a hospital or the PAC, that’s how money is raised, by a belief that the community will be a better place,” O.C. said.

They trust, and recommend to others, that the Community Foundation will be here to look after their charitable interests.

“I don’t think of it as giving to the Community Foundation as much as giving to a need that can be addressed through the Community Foundation,” O.C. said, confident of the Foundation “as a stable organization through which their funds unquestionably will be preserved and used right.”