More than $60 million in grants making an impact

The Efroymson Family Fund is one of the largest donor-advised funds in the United States, with total assets exceeding $100 million. Since the fund was established in 1998, it has awarded more than $60 million to 950 local, regional, national and international organizations. View 2008 and 2009 grants.

Efroymson Family Instrumental in Birth of CICF and Viability of Indianapolis 

Active in a wide variety of interests and charitable organizations, Dan and Lori Efroymson brought dramatic change to The Indianapolis Foundation – and to the landscape of philanthropy in central Indiana. Like the Efroymsons who came before, Lori and Dan had a strategic vision for their philanthropy and how it might better serve the community. By encouraging “donor-advised” funds made by living people, they would dramatically increase the number of those who gave their money to help organizations. They oversaw the beginnings of a regional community foundation, Central Indiana Community Foundation.

According to former CICF Executive Director Ken Gladish, Dan knew the Foundation needed to change if it was to flourish in the coming century.

“Dan could see a higher calling for the Foundation, a larger future for its impact, and the definitive possibility of its leadership in the new century which lay just ahead,” said Gladish.

That calling was CICF, a new foundation to serve the central Indiana region and built upon the history of The Indianapolis Foundation and the new energy of Legacy Fund in Hamilton County.

In 1998, Dan and Lori Efroymson established the Efroymson Fund with a $90 million gift, one of the first donor-advised funds accepted by the Foundation. “In making this gift, we wish to express our confidence in the structure and future of the community foundation,” Dan said at the time. Lori added, “We have great confidence in CICF, The Indianapolis Foundation and Legacy Fund.”

The Fund continues a long legacy of charitable commitment by the Efroymson family in central Indiana. Since Dan’s death in 1999, Lori Efroymson-Aguilera and their two children, Jeremy and Elissa, continue the family’s philanthropic legacy by providing financial support to charitable organizations throughout Indianapolis, the state of Indiana and across the United States. CICF facilitates family meetings and manages the family’s grantmaking process, meeting with hundreds of grant seekers annually, reviewing applications and making recommendations to the family.

For the past 10 years, the family’s grantmaking focus has been to improve the viability of Indianapolis and provide grants for the welfare of the disadvantaged; the natural environment; historic preservation; and the well-being of the Jewish people. The Efroymson family also has supported the arts community in Indianapolis for decades, believing that art is a vehicle for exploring new ideas and stimulating community dialogue. Recently, Lori was named by Indianapolis Monthly as one of the city’s most powerful people in the arts and received the 2007 Governor’s Arts Award.

Among the fund’s best-known projects is the biennial Efroymson Contemporary Arts Fellowship program. Managed by CICF, it provides $20,000 grants via a competitive selection process to artists living in Indiana as well as select counties in Kentucky and Ohio. These grants can be used for living expenses, equipment and supplies, studio rental, and travel essential to artistic research or to complete artistic work.

Like the individuals and organizations they support, the Efroymsons strive to be creative in their funding process. From the Indianapolis Museum of Art — which named its entrance pavilion for them in honor of their generosity— to the Nature Conservancy, they give to programs and projects that appeal to them logically, as well as those about which they have strong feelings. “We try to be strategic about our giving,” said Lori, “but also try to stay flexible and respond to needs as they arise.”

“The Fund brings us great joy and satisfaction. It unites our family in a mission to support people and places. I have found that helping others is a reward in itself, and I appreciate the opportunity to give to what we believe in and care about,” said Lori.

The Efroymsons’ generous grants help people locally and around the world lead better lives.

Excerpts from this article taken from The Efroymsons: A Family History of Giving, by Mike Knight


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