Endowment Fund

Nomination forms are available for grants from the St. Luke’s Endowment Fund for Mission. The amount available for grants be known in February. As long as a $100,000 base is maintained, each year 2% of the year-end value of the Endowment Fund and 20% of that year’s new contributions to the fund may be given as disbursement grants to suggested projects that meet these criteria:

• Outreach into the community and synod, including but not limited to, grants to the ELCA seminaries, colleges or students attending such schools, social service agencies, institutions and agencies designed for persons in our parish who are in spiritual and/or economic need.
• ELCA benevolent missions in the USA or world wide, including but not limited to, grants to the LCA for new congregational development, professional leadership, educational ministries, global mission, ecumenism, social ministries and capital financing.
• Evangelism, including causes and programs which are consistent with the Endowment Fund’s purpose of enhancing the mission of outreach, mission support and evangelism in this congregation.
• Capital expenditures for St. Luke’s Lutheran Church, up to 25% of the allocated amount may be used for the purpose of making a distribution to a special fund set up by the congregation for capital expenditures.

Capital expenditures for St. Luke’s Lutheran Church St. Luke’s Endowment Fund for Mission began in 2001 with a bequest from Ruth Peterson in the amount of $36,000. With that gift, St. Luke’s Council established our Endowment Fund and set a goal of $100,000 before disbursements would be made. That goal was reached in seven years from only 15 individuals. Ruth’s initial bequest was the largest received during the first ten years, but other bequests and gifts to the Fund allowed it to grow so that the first grants were made in 2007.