May 2024 Newsletter

A Night to Remember: The Celebration of Philanthropy Recap

Stitching Comfort: The Dream Quilters’ Warm Embrace for Hospice Patients in Northern Colorado

Pathways Hospice does a lot to help members of the community and their families. From offering a variety of care services based on specific needs to providing grief and loss support, Pathways has created an impactful presence in the Larimer and Weld County communities.

While Pathways Hospice has been making an impact in people’s lives through its services, a group of volunteers has also been providing something special to those being served by Pathways.

The Dream Quilters, a group of nearly 60 volunteers, have been making a loving impact at the new Pathways Inpatient Care Center. Volunteering their skills, time, and energy, this group has been making quilts for every patient who is cared for at the center.

While this group seems large now, it started with a single person. Lauri Dykstra was a retired manager from Safeway in Fort Collins and was looking to keep busy in her retirement. She discovered that her love for sewing could be turned into a meaningful hobby. The group quickly grew to five friends who started out making smaller quilts for Poudre Valley Hospital.

Soon, Lauri started sewing at Quilters Dream in Loveland, which led to more connections with people in the community who wanted to help make quilts for donations. As the word spread about what this small but mighty group of volunteers was doing, more and more people started donating fabrics. This included the Northern Colorado Quilters Guild, who donated an entire truckload of fabric to the cause, which the Quilters Dream owner helped to store for the group.

It wasn’t long before Nancy Cole began helping with quilts at Quilters Dream one day a month, which quickly grew to several hours per week. She would help by putting together quilt “kits” for others to take home and do on their own.

“My mother had recently passed away and I know how much her final quilt meant to her. I saw this volunteer opportunity in the Quilter’s Dream newsletter. I was looking for a volunteer opportunity in retirement. I knew my skills could be put to work and do what I loved, a perfect match,” said Nancy.

Before long, the Dream Quilters grew to what it is now. The group of selfless volunteers, led by Lauri Dykstra and Nancy Cole, creates about 30 to 40 quilts per month. Every time a patient comes to the Care Center, they find a new 60 by 75-inch quilt covering their bed when they arrive. After the patient has passed, the quilt is given to the family and friends as a memory of their loved one.

“We do what we do for the pleasure we gain knowing we bring comfort to others in their time of grief,” said Lauri.

The volunteers support all their work through donations and selling quilts to raise funds. They often only make the quilt tops. Lauri, Nancy, and the team then purchase batting with donations and sales of other quilts. The batting needed for the number of quilts this group creates adds up to approximately $1,500 per year.

Each quilt created represents a $250 donation to Pathways.

This group of volunteers is doing something incredible in the lives of those being cared for by Pathways. While it may seem like a small gesture, it has a mighty impact.

Thanks to Pathways Hospice for sharing this amazing story with us. You can experience the incredible story of these dedicated volunteers in their YouTube video showcasing their remarkable contributions! https://bit.ly/PathwaysQuilters

Loveland and Windsor’s Pact for Water Prosperity

Water is a scarce resource that has always been a concern for Northern Colorado communities. But as Larimer and Weld Counties continue to grow, the concern over the water resources has become even greater.

This growing concern led to the realization that there was a need to begin a conversation around water resource management between the public officials and community leaders in Northern Colorado. But that may have been easier said than done.

According to the Town Manager of Windsor, Shane Hale, the conversation around water has historically been very self-serving. Public officials have been concerned with the needs of their own communities and haven’t been open to collaboration in any substantive ways. But that all changed recently when Loveland and Windsor entered into a water agreement.

“I broached the topic with Steve Adams, who was City Manager of Loveland at the time. Once we were able to agree on a rough framework, the water resources staff from each municipality worked together on the agreement. From start to finish, I think that we had it done in under a year, which is breakneck speed in the water world,” said Shane Hale.

According to an article from the Loveland Report-Herald, Loveland has enough water to supply its community for decades to come, Windsor on the other hand, does not have as much to spare. This 10-year agreement says that Loveland will give Windsor up to 500 acre-feet of water per year in exchange for an annual cash payment.

Loveland gets about half of its water from the Colorado-Big Thompson project (C-BT), which is a transmountain diversion system that deposits water from the Colorado River into the Big Thompson. The other half comes from sources in the Big Thompson watershed. This adds up to about 25,000 acre-feet per year, allowing Loveland to rely on this amount, even in times of drought.

This amount will increase with the completion of the Chimney Hollow and Great Western Reservoir, giving Loveland access to 30,000 acre-feet. While this won’t be a reality until about 2060, Loveland still has a surplus of water that can help their neighbor to the east.

The agreement, which began in 2024, states that Loveland will transfer the water from the Colorado-Big Thompson project (C-BT) to Windsor. The Town of Windsor will be able to use it as an emergency backup supply. In a dire emergency, Loveland can choose to keep the water instead or only fulfill a portion of Windsor’s order.

“This lease was precisely the lifeline that Windsor was looking for,” Hale said.

Hale mentioned that the town of Windsor has been participating in the NISP ( Northern Integrated Supply Project) for 20 years and anticipates that it will meet the future needs of Windsor once it is operational. Their current challenge is that the town needs to save money now from developers to help pay for NISP. However, if they don’t acquire additional water the town could experience water shortages if Northern Colorado has a period of extended drought.  This lease will help them with that gap.

The conversation that led to this agreement didn’t happen by chance. It happened thanks to the Northern Colorado Water Alliance.

The Northern Colorado Water Alliance was started four years ago by the NoCo Foundation, and the bimonthly meetings to keep the conversation going among community leaders and decision-makers are still facilitated by the NoCo Foundation team.

This community-wide conversation has been a necessary step in finding solutions to provide new developments with water rights and ensuring different towns and cities can provide their residents with the water they need.

“Through the efforts of the Alliance, people who have historically maintained an adversarial position around this topic are finally coming to the table to explore ways to collaborate.  I am certain that we would not have come to this agreement a decade ago—and possibly not even 5 years ago,” said Hale.

Northern Colorado may be broken up into various growing cities and towns, but we are all one big community, and this is a beautiful example of what it looks like when we look out for our neighbors and become better together.

“I hope that we continue to have visionary leaders who can look beyond narrow self-interests and instead see a larger win-win for the region as a whole. It would have been easier for Loveland to simply tell us no—the willingness to come to the table and look for benefits in collaboration is groundbreaking in many ways,” Hale said.

Celebrate Variety: Many Assets Make Great Gifts to Charity

When your client is getting ready to make a contribution to a fund at the NoCo Foundation or to another charitable organization, remind them not to automatically reach for the checkbook! There are many other (and typically more tax-savvy) options to consider.

Marketable Securities

Gifts of long-term appreciated stock to a donor advised or other type of fund at the NoCo Foundation is always one of the most tax-savvy ways to support favorite charitable causes because capital gains tax can be avoided. Gifts of publicly traded stock, for example, are easy to transfer to a fund. The Foundation team can provide you and your clients with transfer instructions to make the process simple.

As with a cash gift, the NoCo Foundation will provide a receipt for tax purposes, and the gift of stock will be valued at the shares’ fair market value on the date of transfer. When the Foundation sells the shares, the proceeds flow into the client’s fund without any reduction for capital gains taxes. This is because the NoCo Foundation is a 501(c)(3) charitable organization and therefore does not pay income tax. That would not have been the case, however, if the client had sold the stock first and then transferred the proceeds to a fund at the Foundation; the client would owe capital gains tax on the sale. Especially in cases where the client has held the stock a long time and it’s significantly increased in value, the capital gains hit can be major.

Closely-Held Business Interests

The NoCo Foundation team is happy to work with you and your client to explore how the client might give shares of a closely-held business to a fund at the NoCo Foundation to benefit any eligible nonprofit of their choice. Not only will transfers be eligible for a charitable deduction during the year of transfer (and at fair market value if the shares are held for more than one year), but also these gifts could potentially reduce income tax burdens triggered upon a future sale of the business. Be sure to talk with our team well before any potential sale is in the works; otherwise, your clients might lose out on tax benefits. Gifts of closely-held business interests are powerful but can be tricky to administer.

QCDs from IRAs

As always, keep in mind the Qualified Charitable Distribution (“QCD”) is a financially smart way to support charitable causes. If your client is over the age of 70 ½, the client can direct up to $105,000 (in 2024) from an IRA to certain charities, including a field-of-interest, designated, unrestricted, or scholarship fund at the NoCo Foundation. If your client is subject to the rules for Required Minimum Distributions (RMDs), QCDs count toward those RMDs. That means your client avoids income tax on the funds distributed to charity. Our team can work with you and your client to go over the rules for QCDs and evaluate whether the QCD is a good fit.

Real Estate

Your client’s fund at the NoCo Foundation can receive a tax-deductible gift of real estate, such as farmland or commercial property, in a variety of ways. An outright gift is an option; lifetime gifts of real estate held by the client for more than one year are deductible for income tax purposes at 100% of the fair market value of the property on the date of the gift, which also avoids capital gains tax and reduces the value of your client’s taxable estate. Other ways to give real estate include a bargain sale or a transfer to a charitable remainder trust, providing lifetime income for the client and the client’s family.

Life Insurance

Don’t overlook life insurance as an effective charitable giving tool, whether by naming a client’s fund at the Foundation as a beneficiary or, in the case of whole life policies, naming the fund as beneficiary and transferring the policy itself. If your client transfers a policy, the client may be able to make annual, tax-deductible contributions to the Foundation to cover the premiums.

Other “Alternative” Assets

The NoCo Foundation is happy to work with you and your clients to explore options for giving other non-cash assets to funds at the Foundation, including:

• Oil and gas interests
• Cryptocurrency
• Artwork
• Collectibles

We look forward to working with you to explore your options!

Introducing the Giving Catalog