The Nebraska Community Foundation serves 220 community, organizational and donor-advised affiliated funds in 238 communities located in 79 Nebraska counties. NCF and its affiliated funds have reinvested $138.6 million in Nebraska since 1993.
Jeff Yost
President and CEO
E-mail
Jeff Yost
Jeff Yost joined NCF as Vice President in 1998 and was appointed President and CEO in 2003. Under Jeff’s leadership NCF has sustained a continuous year-over-year growth. Jeff has been instrumental in developing NCF’s unique profile among community foundations nationwide. He has guided NCF’s evolution as an institution that uses philanthropy as a tool for rural community capacity building and economic development.
Jeff is the author of numerous articles and provides lectures and consulting throughout the U.S. and internationally. Topics focus on the power of philanthropy when it transcends the model of traditional charity and the phenomena of the intergenerational transfer of wealth within the context of small rural places. In the past 10 years, Jeff has worked in over 25 states and internationally in Southeast Asia, Europe, Australia and the former Soviet Union.
Jeff’s other leadership positions include serving as a co-founder and chair of the HomeTown Competitiveness collaborative (an award winning community economic development framework), Nebraska representative on the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City Community Development Advisory Council, a member of the Council on Foundations’ national task force on community leadership, adjunct faculty for the University of Nebraska–Department of Public Administration and a member of the Nebraska State Library Advisory Council.
Yost was honored for his professional and volunteer work in 2002 by being selected one of the Lincoln Journal-Star’s “20 under 40–Lincoln’s Emerging Leaders.”
Prior to joining NCF, Jeff served as a policy and budget advisor to Nebraska Governor E. Benjamin Nelson. Jeff received bachelor’s degrees in economics and agricultural business from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He is a lifelong Nebraska resident and a native of Red Cloud. Yost and his wife Cindy Ryman Yost have three young children, Elizabeth, Carter and Harrison.
Gift Endows Exeter Area and NCF
Louisa and Richard Manning
The late Richard Manning admitted that he liked to kid around. However, the charitable gift that he and his wife, Louisa, have made will have a truly meaningful impact for generations to come.
Richard and Louisa Manning, both 1944 graduates of Exeter High School, used a charitable IRA distribution to make a $50,000 challenge grant to the Exeter Community Foundation Fund to establish an unrestricted endowment. The Charitable IRA Rollover law, which expired December 31, 2011, allowed those age 70½ and older to transfer funds from an IRA to a charity tax free. Their hometown community successfully raised over $100,000 in additional funds in just two years, creating a $150,000 permanent endowment.
In addition, Mr. and Mrs. Manning contributed $50,000 to the Nebraska Community Foundation’s endowment. This generous gift holds even more value because it qualified for matching funds from the Ford Foundation Challenge grant.
Read more →