Stories

Marnie & Bill Brehm Family Fund

The Brehms have confidence in HCF’s decision-making

 

Bill and Marnie Brehm

Marnie and Bill Brehm

Marnie Brehm has been involved with Hamilton Community Foundation since the 1980s, as a Board member and a contributor. She knows it well and trusts it to understand community needs. She and her husband Bill contribute regularly to the Community Fund.

“The Community Fund gives the Foundation capacity to respond to the most urgent needs in the community,” she says. Recent examples include the Foundation’s poverty work and its ABACUS education initiative.

Marnie, an accountant, and Bill, a retired planning consultant, have volunteered their time and talents at the leadership level in many organizations over the decades and they have confidence that Hamilton Community Foundation assesses community needs effectively. That is one reason they support the Community Fund – what Bill says in other organizations might be called the “general fund.” They also like the flexibility the Community Fund gives the Foundation and the speed with which it responds to changing community needs.

Marnie and Bill both support the community in a variety of ways – through HCF and other organizations – and they feel giving to the Community Fund is an important component of their philanthropy.

“While we could choose to support a particular cause or issue – and we do that in other aspects of our giving – we think the Community Fund is crucial too,” Marnie says. “The Foundation is in a position to best determine the needs of the community and this gives them the capacity to respond.”

Bill agrees: “Marnie’s Board experience and our contacts with staff give us confidence in the Community Fund decision-making process.  The Foundation works hard to identify and address key needs to be filled in the community.”

 

Excerpt from 2016 Annual Report