About

• We help people with charitable intent; that is, someone who would like to set up a scholarship, perhaps, or a fund benefiting a charitable or non-profit entity or a category (senior citizens or mental health).
• They wish to establish a means of providing ongoing grants to the beneficiary of their choice.
• The donor names the fund and indicates the charitable purpose of the fund. We handle all the administrative details, all the paperwork, the accounting, the IRS reporting, the auditing, etc.
• We publicize the funds as appropriate, we communicate with the original fund donors, providing them quarterly financial statements and other information. We invest our assets so they can grow and become more valuable with time.
• Besides these endowment funds (that are usually intended to last forever), we also manage project specific funds. These funds are established by an organization for the purpose of some sort of short term project…usually a capital improvement project. Our project specific funds have helped build a new baseball stadium (Hackman Field), the new pavilion in Wildwood Park, the Griese Park soccer fields, the Marshfield Community Athletic Facilities, and others. These funds have often been partnerships with the city, in which the city provided partial funding and private donors provided the rest through our fund. Once the project is completed, the fund is either spent down to zero or remaining money is converted into a sustained fund that will provide ongoing maintenance or improvements for the original project.
• In addition to annual grants from our named funds, we also award grants from our Commnuity Grants Fund which provides local nonprofits the opportunity to apply for competitive grants. These discretionary grants provide the Foundation its greatest flexibility in responding to and addressing new and changing community needs. Complete information about all our grants is available on the Grants from Funds page.
• Our funds are community centered—the funds we raise stay right here and help support a variety of charitable and philanthropic purposes in Marshfield and the surrounding area. Our Unrestricted Fund is partially dependent on annual public contributions. An unrestricted gift to Marshfield Area Community Foundation, Inc. directly enriches the quality of life we all share, thanks to the work of many organizations and individuals (see Making a Charitable Gift page.)
• We are a corporate form organization. Our investments are held by Associated Trust Company and Wealth Management. They do all the actual investing of our money with oversight from our Board. Our Board is broadly representative of the community. Some of them are at-large members of the board, others are outside appointments (see Our Board and Staff page.) All of them are highly respected individuals in our service area (see Geographic Service Area section below.)

A pioneer Marshfield family provided the impetus for the establishment of Marshfield Area Community Foundation, Inc. in 1993. The two daughters of John Peter (J.P.) Adler and Rosamond Victoria Bille Adler shared a goal: to make a long-term impact on their home community of Marshfield in the name of their parents.

In 1993, Anne Victoria and Elizabeth Bille Adler offered a challenge grant of $25,000. This money was used to establish the Adler Family Fund within the Foundation. It provided the motivating force from which Marshfield Area Community Foundation, Inc. emerged. Joe Lang, shortly thereafter, came forward to establish the Joe Lang Fund; thereby “matching” the amount required by the Adler grant, and Marshfield Area Community Foundation, Inc. was officially underway!

In 1999, the Foundation’s assets reached $1 million and had 31 funds. Since then it has grown to over 200 funds and $14 million in assets. These funds include unrestricted funds, designated funds, field of interest funds, scholarship funds, donor advised funds, project specific, fiscal sponsorship funds and legacy funds. (See Our Funds for a full description of each type of fund.)

Since 2004, The Marshfield Area Community Foundation, Inc. has met the National Standards for U.S. Community Foundations. The National Standards serve both as a blueprint for internal organizational development and as a tangible set of benchmarks for external assessment of performance. Basically, achieving National Standards means we have strengthened our commitment to serving our community with accountability and excellence.

Under the careful management of its Board and staff, the Foundation is working to make Marshfield Area Community Foundation, Inc. stronger today and stronger for future generations.

We were initially established as a trust in 1993. Marshfield Area Community Foundation, Inc. changed it’s organizational structure to a corporation, January 1, 2016.

The official geographic service area of Marshfield Area Community Foundation, Inc., beginning to our west and traveling clockwise, includes the following communities in addition to Marshfield (It also includes towns and rural areas between these communities.):

• Chili
• Granton
• Neillsville
• Loyal
• Greenwood
• Withee
• Owen
• Spencer
• Unity
• Colby
• Curtiss
• Pittsville

• Abbotsford
• Dorchester
• Stetsonville
• Medford
• Stratford
• Rozellville
• Hewitt
• Auburndale
• Blenker
• Milladore
• Sherry
• Arpin