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The Boat
When Chief Brody gets his first close-up of the great white shark in the 1975 film Jaws, he is visibly shaken. He walks backward into the cabin and tells Captain Quint flat-out, “You’re gonna need a bigger boat.” That iconic phrase quickly took on a life of its own. Today, when a task requires more resources than anticipated, it’s suddenly—and justifiably—all about the boat.
Well, Quint didn’t get a bigger boat to hunt the toothy terror, and we know how that story ends. On the other hand, the Foundation has continued to scale, building capacity and resources to meet challenges and seize opportunities across the region every year. However, the structural integrity of the organization, the boat, remains the same. And it’s well-equipped with the tools and strategies needed to sail vast and unpredictable seas.
By design, most of our resources are endowment funds. They provide funds for current use in perpetuity. They give us predictability, stability, ballast. They also give us flexibility. This year, our Board voted to maintain the standard 4.25% spending rate for our endowed funds with the ability for our discretionary and donor-advised funds to increase spending to 6%. This allows us to respond to immediate, escalating community need while still maintaining the endowment restriction placed by donors.
Planned gifts, although unexpected, give us a second pool of resources. Recently, we told you about a large, unrestricted bequest we received. Our Board allocated a portion for current use, which will be deployed this year to support basic human needs, and created an endowment fund with the balance that will be invested over time. The decision supports our commitment to have additional resources now AND for the future as needs continue to expand and change.
“Current use” funding from trusted partners gives us a third resource. In the last six months, we have received over $1 million in funding to deploy immediately into our community. These resources come from individual donors and private foundations who trust us to use our community knowledge and connections to make strategic, impactful grants throughout the region.
In the next newsletter, our Vice President of Impact, Jeanne Ruckert Lovy, will talk about our community outreach, analysis, and strategy for these resources and report on recent grantmaking. Our hope is that this will inform and advance your own philanthropic plan and/or inspire you to continue to support the Foundation’s initiatives.
Yes, every year the task is great. But, by working together, we’ve built a powerful boat that can ebb and flow with the changing tides. We raised and distributed more than $5.6 million through our Strategic Emergency Response Fund during the pandemic; in 2025, we provided over $973,000 in Flexible Funding Grants to 53 nonprofits navigating sudden budget cuts at the state and local level and over $100,000 in emergency funding to support regional food security. The Blizzard of 2026 brought another flurry of need; we responded with over $220,000 in support to 40 nonprofits.
Thanks to you, our boat is strong and sea-worthy. We can navigate whatever waters we’re in and move forward, leaving some good in our wake.
Kristin O’Malley
President and CEO
508.790.3040, Ext 115
komalley@capecodfoundation.org
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