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Donor Advised Fund


Jackie & Paul Deaton

A personal approach to giving.

Opening a Donor Advised Fund allows you to make a gift to your community foundation, then remain actively involved in suggesting uses for your gift. You can work with our professional program staff to suggest ongoing uses for the fund — targeting the issues you care about the most. Grant awards are issued to charities in the name of the fund (or anonymously if you prefer). It’s a simple, powerful, and highly personal approach to giving.

Donor Advised Funds are convenient, flexible tools for individuals, families, businesses, or groups that want to be personally involved in suggesting grant awards made possible by their gifts. If you have a range of community interests, you may find that it’s an ideal vehicle for fulfilling your charitable wishes. Donor Advised Funds are typically less costly and easier to administer than other forms of philanthropic giving (such as family or corporate foundations).

Your gift can be combined with others to increase its impact, and you can add to the fund you establish at any time, receiving tax benefits with each new gift. You can establish a fund today and make grant recommendations now or in the future. And if you endow your gift, it becomes a permanent community funding resource.

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.

For Fund Holders
Donor Recommendation Form
Guidelines Governing Donor Advised Funds

Jackie and Paul Deaton
A personal connection
            Jackie and Paul Deaton are the essence of community.  Not long ago, if you were growing up in Valdese or just passing through, you may have encountered Jackie or Paul.  Your path may have crossed Jackie’s in an art class, or while painting backdrops for a stage production, or perhaps as she painted her annual Christmas card to the community on a storefront window.  If you had surgery though, it may have been Dr. Pleasant Paul Deaton whose noble skills saw you through.
            Dr. Deaton grew up in Statesville on the family farm, while Jackie hailed from Richmond, Virginia and a home now on the Historic Registry.  After graduating from Davidson College, Paul attended Richmond Medical School where he met Jackie, a nursing student.  His residencies took him from Texas to Japan to Memphis and back to Virginia before settling in Burke County.  They arrived in 1960 while the Valdese General Hospital expansion was still under construction.  Their first year was spent in Morganton while Paul was doing surgery at Broughton Hospital.  “We made some wonderful friends.”  Jackie reminisced during a recent interview.  “Paul had been a classmate of Sam Ervin, III at Davidson and Grace DiSanto took me and our little girls under her wing.”  Burke County was their idea of the perfect place to work and rear their family.  Paul mused that Dr. Palmer at Valdese General was like a father to him.  “One time he brought seventeen cats to our five children and another time he brought them a bunch of chickens.”  Jackie, then a fledgling artist, found painting to be the perfect outlet from all the confusion that children, cats and chickens created.
            When the financial advisors for the Deatons explained the tax advantages of foundations and endowments, they considered establishing a family foundation.  Paul read about the Community Foundation of Burke County in the newspaper and attended a seminar they presented.  “It was perfect,” he said.  “We didn’t have to create and manage a foundation, but we will be able to achieve our goals.”
            As relatively new donors to the Community Foundation, the Deatons are still learning the benefits of their Donor Advised Endowment Fund.  Jackie stated, “We want to support the arts, public broadcasting, and museums because they bring joy to our lives; while the Burke Mission Station, Habitat, Options, Hospice, and others are close to our hearts because they help people.”  Over the years, Jackie and Paul have served on the boards of numerous local nonprofit organizations and they are equally passionate about the broader community.  They’ve attended the World Affairs Institute conferences for the past twenty-five years voicing their concern for peace and justice, and our environment.  They are a couple who worry about being good stewards of the land and the survival of mankind.
            This December will mark the Deaton’s 50th wedding anniversary.  Their five very successful children are now scattered throughout the U.S. with families of their own.  Jackie and Paul, as you might expect, dote on each of their eleven grandchildren and they are proud that their son, David who is also a surgeon, will be the next generation grant advisor for their endowment fund.  Jackie and Paul Deaton are an adoring couple who feel blessed to consider this community, their church and dear friends as part of their family.