Learning to Inspire Generosity in Response to Disasters

Following the horrific 2010 Alabama tornadoes, The Patterson Foundation demonstrated how a foundation can inspire philanthropy in communities impacted by disasters. Lessons learned from supporting Northeast Alabama guided us as we created core guidelines to inform our future philanthropy efforts following disasters.

Goal – Inspire generosity among communities in Northeast Alabama to aid those most severely devastated by the spring 2010 tornadoes.

Partners – Community Foundation of Northeast Alabama

Collaborative Actions – The Patterson Foundation issues initial $100,000 dollar-for-dollar match to leverage gifts from new donors throughout Northeast Alabama for tornado recovery.

As communities quickly responded to the challenge, The Patterson Foundation raised the match to $250,000.

New Realities -

Through TPF’s innovative way of inspiring collaborative philanthropy, the Community Foundation of Northeast Alabama (CFNEA) went above and beyond its usual fundraising strategies and took a proactive approach to growing philanthropy.

CFNEA used the matching challenge to encourage and energize donors throughout Northeast Alabama. The challenge became a call-to-action for donors to support CFNEA and allowed the community foundation to encourage a broader base of donors to share in CFNEA’s mission.

To learn more about our disaster philanthropy approach in Alabama, please visit our Learning and Sharing Blog.