A Match for Estate Gifts Helps 30-Year-Old Leader Build Endowment

Mike Goorhouse was just 25 when he got the job offer of his dreams. Nearly five years ago, the Community Foundation of the Holland/Zeeland Area, located in his Michigan hometown, asked him to join the staff as part of a succession plan. The understanding was that in a few years, after the current leader retired, he would take the helm.

The community needed some convincing to trust a baby-faced millennial to manage $55 million in assets. But his supporters’ trust motivated Mr. Goorhouse to lead with confidence. Even in meetings where he was the youngest person present, he never held back from sharing his perspective.

“The sector was really yearning to engage young people,” he says, but it wasn’t well-equipped to work with people who didn’t speak its language. But in Mr. Goorhouse, now 30 and a self-proclaimed “cross-generational communicator,” foundation leaders found what they were looking for: a young person steeped in the world of philanthropy since he was a teenager.

At age 18, Mr. Goorhouse joined the 65-year-old foundation’s Youth Advisory Committee, which makes grants to local charities. Before graduating from high school he became the youth panel’s chair, giving him a seat at Board of Trustees meetings. “This organization just totally decided to invest in me,” he says.

Board members took him on fundraising meetings. The executive director took him under his wing and brought him to city functions, and he was the first recipient of the foundation’s annual young philanthropist award.

After several years working at the Michigan Council of Foundations both during and after his time at Calvin College in nearby Grand Rapids, he followed his high school sweetheart back to Holland. He became the community grant maker’s vice president of development in 2012 and two years ago took over as chief executive of the Holland/Zeeland fund, which supports the two cities on the west side of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula.

“Everyone thought I knew where the money was,” he says. “And to be honest, I did.”

Community Savings Account

In his first year as a foundation executive, Mr. Goorhouse helped bring in a total of $8 million in new gifts, a substantial haul for a group whose annual fundraising had averaged $5 million over the last decade. “The board was going nuts,” he says. But $7.75 million of that was earmarked for donor-advised funds, scholarships, and ongoing support to specific charities. Just $225,000 went into the endowment that finances the foundation’s grant making to meet local needs.

Mr. Goorhouse quickly realized how much work his organization had ahead to increase what he calls the “savings account for the community.” It had been about 20 years since the foundation made a meaningful effort to build its endowment.

He helped the foundation develop a five-year strategic plan, which began with a campaign to help the community understand how the organization uses its unrestricted endowment, currently $15 million, and the $40 million in restricted funds that represent the bulk of its assets.

The next phase is an ongoing drive to increase the endowment to $20 million in the next three years. Donors have given $1.3 million so far — reaching a goal of $2 million will trigger an additional $1 million challenge gift.

Planned-Gift Incentives

The foundation is also making a major push for the future. Its goal is to persuade 100 individuals or couples to make a planned gift to the endowment, with a goal of generating $20 million in future gifts.

Two donors have agreed to match each new planned-gift commitment with outright contributions of $10,000 each. Mr. Goorhouse hopes that providing an incentive in the form of a matching donation will encourage donors who had been thinking about an estate gift to act now. And for those who had already written the community foundation into their estate plans but not told anyone, it would present an opportunity to come forward.

“We had no idea if it would work,” Mr. Goorhouse says.

The foundation launched the “Today. Tomorrow. Forever.” campaign last September, with a 600-person event in a light-strung boat shed on Lake Macatawa.

The plan seems to be working. By the time the event concluded, Mr. Goorhouse walked away with three new estate-gift pledges. Now, eight months in, the foundation is just shy of 60 new planned-gift commitments.

“Raising this kind of money is brutal,” he says, noting that these donors relinquish control of how their dollars are spent. The foundation is making the case that a community should prepare to meet unexpected future needs beyond donors’ own lifetimes and saving unrestricted dollars is the best way to do that.

“This is not the most fun gift for donors to make,” Mr. Goorhouse says, “but it’s been so much fun to watch the community rally around this.”

This is the latest installment of a new series, On the Rise, that profiles people making a difference in the nonprofit world.