Editor’s note: This is another in a monthly series of articles celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Shawano Area Community Foundation.
Lon and Ellen Swedberg believe strongly that you should give where you live. For them, that means Shawano and the Shawano Area Community Foundation.
“We both really enjoy the concept of giving to the community,” said Ellen, who was an SACF board member early on. “The community has been very good to us and we felt we should give back to the community.”
Shawano has supported the Swedberg family as individuals, she said, and has supported the family funeral home business, which operates in Shawano, Gresham and Bonduel.
Lon and Ellen are SACF charter members. They established the Lon and Ellen Swedberg Family Fund within the SACF in 1997. They use the donor advised fund to support a range of charitable causes from environmental groups to education, health care and pet welfare organizations.
They are in the process of arranging an estate gift to their fund for after their lives. They want their children to recommend grants from the fund after they are gone. They plan to let their children select the causes that benefit from a portion of the fund, with the rest continuing to support Lon and Ellen’s own favorite causes.
That’s the kind of flexibility and service they have come to expect from their local foundation, along with the investment and nonprofit expertise that comes from its affiliation with the larger Community Foundation for the Fox Valley Region.
“I think there’s a need here.”
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