Don Linton’s idea for a community foundation was born, quite literally, at 35,000 feet. Flying home from a family vacation in the early 1980s, Linton had a sobering thought: his entire family was on that plane, and he had no plan for what would happen to his assets if they didn’t make it home. That question stayed with him. It became the seed of an idea for what would grow into The Community Foundation of Frederick County, founded in 1986.
Linton met with banker David Shives, who introduced him to a concept he’d never heard of.
“A community foundation allows every member of a community, no matter their wealth or income level, to contribute to endowment funds that are invested in perpetuity,” Shives told him. “The income earned on those invested funds is used to benefit the community.”
And forty years later, that is exactly how the Community Foundation works. Gifts become principal. Principal is never spent. Only the income it earns funds our grants and scholarships, forever.
Calvin Murray’s gift is a perfect example. In 2012, he left his estate to the Community Foundation, valued at $20 million, instructing us to support two causes: his church and Frederick Health Hospital. The first grants went out in 2014: the church used its grant to build an ADA-accessible addition, and the hospital used its grant toward construction of the James M. Stockman Cancer Institute. Through grants from his component fund at the Community Foundation, Calvin Murray continues to make a positive impact on these two organizations that were meaningful to him, more than a decade after his lifetime.
Here’s what that growth looks like, decade by decade.
1986: Our first gift was a $10,000 check from Ed Blumenauer, before we even had a bank account. Our first grant – $500 – was made in 1988.
1996: By our 10th anniversary, our assets under management stood at nearly $7.5 million. In our first 10 years we distributed just under $1 million in grants and scholarships.
2006: By our 20th anniversary, assets had grown to more than $35 million. Total grants and scholarships distributed by the end of 2006 reached just over $15 million. 
2012: Following Calvin Murray’s bequest, our assets climbed to nearly $82 million.
2026: Today, as we mark our 40th anniversary, we manage more than $240 million in assets across more than 850 component funds and have distributed more than $122 million in grants and scholarships to Frederick County students and nonprofits since 1986.
That is the power of a community foundation, and of endowment. While it can be tempting to think that charitable dollars should simply be spent wherever the need is greatest today, endowed funds are designed to do something different: meet needs today and preserve resources to meet needs tomorrow.
The assets entrusted to the Community Foundation are invested for the long term, with a portion available for grants and scholarships year after year. That means a gift made decades ago can still be helping a student attend college, feeding a family or strengthening a nonprofit today, and can continue making a difference long after all of us are gone. Rather than choosing between saving and giving, endowment allows us to do both: continually putting money into the community while protecting a permanent source of charitable resources for whatever challenges and opportunities Frederick County’s future may bring.