Established in 1955, United Methodist Foundation, Inc. is a stewardship ministry of The United Methodist Church. UMF was founded with the vision to serve all churches, institutions and agencies of the North Carolina Conference, acting as trustee for a variety of accounts including church building funds, mission endowments, scholarships, awards, cemetery maintenance funds, and memorial funds. All of these accounts begin through the visionary leadership of church members, pastors, institutions, and others who care deeply about their legacy to future generations.
Today, "the people called Methodist" in North Carolina thrive in part due to the long-range visions brought to reality through permanent endowments created in the early years of the Foundation. Scholarships for students at the Conference colleges, support for churches throughout the region, and special awards are all made possible by those far-seeing dreamers who saw they could make a difference in perpetuity.
The central mission of United Methodist Foundation, Inc. is its Endowment Program and gift planning consultation service for member churches, Conference agencies, institutions, and special ministries, and for individual members of the North Carolina Conference. This service provides stewardship consultation to help local churches as well as Conference institutions and agencies establish permanent endowment programs. We also provide planned giving consultation for individual donors wishing to establish permanent or long-term gift arrangements to benefit various ministries of the Church.
UMF’s Planned Giving service is donor focused. Our staff offers specialized “technical” assistance to help donors accomplish their benevolent goals by creating gift plans most appropriate for their situation. We have experience working cooperatively with donor’s legal, tax and financial advisors.
Read more about Planning your Gift to a United Methodist Church.
Churches, institutions and individuals who have accounts with United Methodist Foundation, Inc. work directly with our staff to sow the seeds of their dreams by developing individualized legal agreements. UMF offers permanent endowments and revocable investment accounts designed to fulfill a variety of stewardship goals. The flexibility in developing these agreements helps ensure that each account will serve its intended purpose with regards to long-term growth, protection of principal, frequency of distributions, re-investment of earnings, and guidelines for distributions.
With a strong, long-term relationship with Smith Barney, United Methodist Foundation, Inc. nurtures the growth of its investment accounts from seedlings to full-grown trees through our Balanced Fund and Fixed-Income Fund. These are funds in which churches, individuals, and institutions can invest with confidence. Our Balanced Fund has a 25 year Annual Average Return of 9.64%. In 2006 the rate was 10.46%. (Both figures are net of fees). Our management fee of 1.2% makes it possible for us to offer free planned giving education to all churches in the North Carolina Conference and to employ top quality staff and the highly regarded fund managers who oversee our portfolio. In 2007, we also added a Short Term Investment Fund in partnership with the Self-Help Credit Union of Durham.
Although we cannot promise specific returns in the future, we CAN promise to provide a carefully diversified investment portfolio of socially responsible investment opportunities. This is an important distinction between UMF and other investment options. Our investment decisions are based on The Social Principles of the United Methodist Church as encouraged by The Book of Discipline and the Investment Guidelines of the United Methodist Church.
"The future is simply
infinite possibility waiting to happen.
What it waits on
is human imagination to crystallize
its possibility."
- Leland Kaiser