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I can’t be the only person in this community who has made the mistake of filling up on bread in an effort to “not eat” until dinner time…only to then find out, once I ate my fill of turkey and mashed potatoes, that I forgot to leave room for dessert. Maybe I can squeeze one in, or I could hold off until later, but how do I choose? What if my favorite is all gone once I’m hungry again later? 

Now think back to the decisions you made at the Thanksgiving table when you were a child. They were pretty different! Maybe you have a better relationship with green bean casserole now. Perhaps you still make a volcano out of your potatoes and gravy – no judgement here! However, we still face similar choices of what and how much we want, and we often leave ourselves bummed out when it comes to balancing the desires of our eyes with the capacity of our stomach…and our metabolism. Can you imagine if you were forced to eat the same Thanksgiving plate now that you would have fixed for yourself when you were ten years old?

The point is that we don’t always know what to do when presented with a bounty such as the one we enjoy on Thanksgiving Day. Needs and wants change as we grow. Our community does the same changing and growing over time. For those that want to make Fayette County a better place to live, you can be faced with decision paralysis. That happens when you are presented with too many choices that are difficult to compare. How do you know which end of the string to pull when unraveling complex community needs? If you find there are multiple areas where you can help, how do you choose which organizations to support and how to divide up your resources?  

Part of the work that the Fayette Community Foundation does is to help you eliminate that decision paralysis. It’s like showing up to the Thanksgiving dinner table and receiving a perfectly portioned helping of everything that you prefer right now. That’s the beauty of endowment funds: they help an organization or field of interest essentially forever, but there is flexibility as needs shift over time. For example, some of the funders who built our education endowments surely didn’t see the changes in technology that have happened over just a few short years! Luckily, endowments provide that flexibility to adapt over time – but they still continue to aid educators. 

As someone who cares about our community, you have the flexibility to choose how you want to help it grow and you can lean on experts within our network to know how to best put your contributions to work both today and in the future. I appreciate that it takes the guess work and the decision paralysis out of the equation – or perhaps I should say, “off the menu,” for this metaphor to work. Even better: you don’t have to start from scratch. If you do want to contribute to Fayette County, you can choose to begin your own family fund (a beautiful way to get different branches of your family tree working together) or add to a pre-existing fund that serves an area of need that you’re passionate about, too. 

My goal is to make supporting your community more accessible so that current generations can get involved sooner in life and make a big impact – both today and in the future. Visit givetofcf.com/donate-now to get started or plan to speak with me first to talk about your options. You can reach me at (765) 827-9966, email info@givetofcf.com, or follow us on Facebook (@FCFConnersville).