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By David Vollrath, Executive Director Union County Foundation Recently the Foundation’s leadership brought together a small group of “lifetime” Union County community leaders. One of the group’s main purposes is to help the Foundation better understand our changing role as we move into the future. The participants in this ongoing group bring to the table a wealth of experience, a lifetime of perspective, and a genuine commitment to seeing that our County continues to be a great place to live, work, and raise our families. Not surprisingly the dialog and counsel that this group is able to offer allows the proverbial forest to actually be seen through the trees. Too often we are immersed in the rigors of the day and lose sight of the bigger picture. This group helps the bigger picture to come into better focus. An historical observation that has come to light through their dialog is a changing local leadership paradigm. Those of us that have spent a lifetime here can clearly remember that our strongest leadership voices in the past tended to be our local business leaders. We knew them by name and would routinely interact with them as we went about our daily lives. They lived in our neighborhoods, walked on our downtown streets, and could easily share a pew with you on Sunday morning. Flash forward to 2008 and realize that we live in a vastly different world. Not necessarily a better or worse world but unmistakably a different world. Our afore mentioned panel correctly pointed out that the business structure of our Union County Communities has largely changed from community based to franchise/globally based businesses. What this means is that the local voice of leadership is greatly diminished because the leadership no longer is locally based. The positive result is that as consumers we now have myriad local choices in regards to all forms of commerce. The downside is that arguably there is a void in community based local leadership. So what does this have to do with you and me and the Union County Foundation? That question is not easily answered but we do know that when a void exists something will fill it. It is up to all of us to make sure we fill it with that which makes our County a desirable place to call home, not just today but for future generations. The Union County Foundation is equipped to help you achieve your charitable goals by providing: planned giving and estate planning resource information, charitable gift annuities/life income plans, and a broad array of charitable choices including establishment of scholarship funds and donor advised funds. The Foundation encourages you to work closely with your professional advisor(s) as you develop your estate plan and consider your present and future charitable goals. Please call us at 937-642-9618, email info@unioncountyfoundation.org, reference our website at www.unioncountyfoundation.org, or stop by our Marysville office at 126 N. Main St. We are committed to helping you… “preserve your footprint in time.” |
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