Land Title Group’s New Foundation Will Fund Local Charities
Throughout the pandemic, American Land Title Association members have been supporting community charities. Inspired by their giving, ALTA created its Good Deeds Foundation to help communities in need.
Taking a page from the example set by its members, the American Land Title Association decided to help communities in need through its new ALTA Good Deeds Foundation.
ALTA CEO Diane Tomb said the organization saw its members immediately diving into the trenches to help early in the pandemic.
“So many of the folks are ingrained in their community,” Tomb said. “We saw our members do really amazing things—whether it was food banking, providing clothes to those in need, or helping with service animals.”
While ALTA was sharing images of members doing good deeds on social media, it wanted to do more. That’s where the ALTA Good Deeds Foundation was born. The idea behind the foundation is to raise money to provide help to charities ALTA members know well.
“We thought we’d focus on the nonprofits our members already support in their communities,” Tomb said. “We thought they would send us a proposal we would review.”
So far, the foundation has already raised $478,000. Tomb credits past president, Mary O’Donnell, for coming up with the idea to use contacts from its annual meeting, ALTA ONE, as a starting point for fundraising. In a typical year, related businesses hosted events for ALTA members in the city during the conference. Once it became clear ALTA ONE would have to go virtual, Tomb said O’Donnell pitched the idea of asking these businesses to take the money they’d earmarked for those events and donate it to the new foundation. O’Donnell worked the phones to help connect with potential donors and identified board members to help in the endeavor.
The foundation was announced during ALTA’s virtual annual meeting on October 6, and by then, around $300,000 had been raised from businesses. Once members learned of the initiative, they began donating too.
“I was so humbled and proud to see the responses,” Tomb said. “Once people started to hear about it, our phones started ringing, and we saw the people wanting to get involved.”
Because ALTA ONE was supposed to be held in New York, the ALTA Good Deed’s first donation was to the Empire State-based Tunnel to Towers Foundation, which builds mortgage-free smart homes for catastrophically injured veterans.
While the foundation was established in response to pandemic needs, its mission is broad enough to encompass other emergencies in the future, such as floods or wildfires. For now, the focus is on helping those with the most need.
“Our next steps are to focus on getting the money out the door and into the communities,” Tomb said. “We want to make sure the overhead is low and the donations can have the most impact.”
(prezent/iStock/Getty Images Plus)
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