Designated Fund

Jean Conyers Ervin

Helping local organizations sustain and grow.

Establishing a Designated Fund allows you to support the good work of a specific nonprofit organization — a senior center, museum, or virtually any nonprofit charitable organization. Because it’s given through your community foundation, your gift provides the organization not only funding, but also the power of endowment. Your gift provides more than just funding — your favorite organization will benefit from your community foundation’s investment stewardship and help with administrative details.

You can add to the fund at any time. If the organization you select ceases to exist or changes in mission, the fund can be redirected so that it continues to address your original charitable intent.

Endowing your nonprofit organization.

Nonprofit organizations can also establish a Designated Fund or agency endowment at the Community Foundation. It’s a simple and efficient way to build an endowment — and help create sustainability — for your nonprofit organization. We handle investment management and the administrative responsibilities related to endowment so that your organization’s staff and volunteer hours are concentrated on fulfilling your mission.

Your donors can be sure that the endowment fund’s principal will not be spent and can grow over time, providing a source of lasting support. And the Community Foundation’s economies of scale provide your organization the benefits of a diverse investment portfolio and low investment fees that typically come only with very large funds.

Your organization’s regular donors can leave a bequest through the Community Foundation to benefit your organization forever and create a personal legacy. The Community Foundation can facilitate even the most complex planned gifts or gifts of appreciated stock or real estate.

There is so much more we’d like you to know. For more information and ideas on ways to integrate your financial planning with charitable giving, ask your financial advisor or contact us.

Jean Conyers Ervin
A source of strength and stability
          Jean Conyers Ervin, a woman before her time, was the last child born into a large family of free-thinkers, each of whom had an agenda and mutual love and respect for one another.
          After graduating from Morganton High School in 1926 and Converse College in 1930, Jean spent a year at the North Carolina School for the Deaf where she received a certificate for special training to teach the deaf. She was then off and running! During the next ten years she taught in state residential schools for the deaf in South Dakota, Utah, and New Jersey.
          In 1942, Jean received a Master of Arts Degree from Columbia University Teachers College and in 1950, a Ph.D. from the University of Missouri. She chose Mark Twain as a speaker for the subject of her dissertation. For the remainder of her life, Jean maintained her interest in Mark Twain and collected his works, articles and books written about him, and Mark Twain memorabilia. She gave most of her collection to the Phifer Learning Resources Center at Western Piedmont Community College prior to her death in 2006. As she wished, the remainder of her collection is now there.
            After teaching at the University of Missouri, the University of Hawaii, and the University of Connecticut, Jean supervised the speech program for the Arlington, Virginia Public Schools for ten years. She then returned to academia at the University of Virginia. During these years, she was active in many professional organizations and taught short courses at many colleges and universities. In 1976, she retired and returned to Morganton to live in the house where she had grown up.
            Back in Morganton, Jean participated in many civic activities. She was an active member of the First Presbyterian Church, the Quaker Meadows Chapter of the National Daughters of the American Revolution, and the Burke County Historical Society. She and Marjorie Miller Triebert, her childhood friend, co-edited The Heritage of Burke County that was sponsored and published by the Burke County Historical Society in 1981. She wrote her autobiography, The Youngest of Ten, that was published in 1997.
            When Jean got a “bee in her bonnet,” she was a force to be reckoned with. This was most evident in her pursuit of a residential retirement home for the aging in Morganton. She became the moving force behind the creation of Mountain House Retirement Center, Inc., later to become Grace Ridge Retirement Community. The facility opened in 1987.
            Jean Ervin made an estate commitment to The Community Foundation of Burke County. She provided assets for the Jean Conyers Ervin Fund which benefits the following: the First Presbyterian Church which played an important role in her life for ninety-seven years, Burke Hospice and Palliative Care from whom she received care and support during the final months of her life, and the North Carolina Room of the Burke County Public Library System. It should be noted that fourteen year old Jean Ervin was a visitor to the Morganton Public Library on its first day of operation in November 1923; at that time, the library was housed in a second story room at 125 West Union Street. Jean also provided assets for the establishment of the Quaker Meadows Cemetery Fund that will provide funds for the maintenance of Quaker Meadows Cemetery, whose restoration efforts were led by her sister Eunice Worth Ervin.