Our mission is to enhance the quality of life in our region.
In the early 1970s, a group of estate-planning attorneys learned of a sizeable estate gift that left Springfield because there wasn’t a place here to accept a general gift for community betterment. Those 11 founders, supported by then-Springfield Mayor Jim Payne and businesswoman Anne Drummond, created the region’s first public charitable foundation in 1973.
Today, the CFO is governed by community volunteers and run by a professional staff that serves a network of donors, regional affiliate foundations, nonprofit partners and professional advisors through approximately 3,700 charitable funds.
In 1993, 20 years after the CFO’s founding, the first affiliate foundation was created in Nixa. Affiliate foundations are governed by local volunteers who are supported by the CFO’s professional staff.
Affiliates represent cities, counties and multi-county regions stretching from the Missouri River south to the borders of our neighboring states.
The CFO’s staff in Springfield, West Plains and Cape Girardeau stands ready to help our constituents achieve their charitable goals.
