Compound Growth: Our 35th Anniversary
KRISTIN O’MALLEY, PRESIDENT AND CEO
According to The Motley Fool, a financial services company dedicated to making the world smarter, happier, and richer, your best friend in long-term investing is compound growth. For truly life-changing wealth, you need to find an emerging company, hold on to its top-performing stock for a long period of time, and let compounding interest work its magic.
Take Starbucks. When the company made its initial public offering on the stock exchange in 1992, its Italian café experience was just beginning to gain traction in the United States. Today, it’s the biggest coffee chain in the world and the second largest restaurant business. Its stock has been a monster for most of its history, gaining 35,000% since its illustrious debut. A $10,000 investment back then would be worth more than $4 million today.
Nike IPO’d a decade earlier. A $10,000 investment in 1980 would be worth more than $20 million today. The same $10K investment in Home Depot a year later would now be worth a whopping $92.5 million.
This may be hard to believe, but I can top that. Right around the same time these promising powerhouses went public, a small (but mighty) startup made its debut on the local scene. In 1989, six Cape Cod residents established The Cape Cod Foundation. They, too, had $10,000 to invest—not in the stock market, in the community. (The H.H. Snow Family Scholarship is still awarded today.) Fast forward three-plus decades, and the Foundation—like a high-performing stock— has distributed more than $100 million in grants and scholarships throughout the community. Talk about compound growth! That’s 100 million reasons to celebrate our 35th Anniversary. Starting now.
Foundation Flashback
Watch this short Introductory Video for a reminder of where it all began. For more videos celebrating the Foundation’s fabulous history click HERE.
Stay Tuned For…
Major Community Challenge
Multiple Community Surprises
We’ve pulled together a few numbers to illustrate the Foundation’s trajectory below. Since 1989, total assets have increased from $10,000 to $100 million. What’s more, they’ve doubled in the past decade alone. During our 25th anniversary year, we committed to increasing our assets to $200 million by the time we turned 50. We’re getting there! We have 15 more wonderful years and just $100 million to go.
The numbers aren’t the only part of the Foundation’s story. Over the past 35 years, we have invested our time, energy, and funding into large-scale community projects, strategic partnerships with broad regional impact, powerful funder collaboratives, shared resources, scholarships for many educational paths, and wraparound support for the nonprofit sector, including funding for programs, capacity-building initiatives, leadership development, workshops, trainings, and technical assistance.
It’s been an incredible 35 years, 420 months, 12,782 days, 306,768 hours, 18,406,080 minutes, and 1,104,364,800 seconds. And the clock’s still ticking. Our plans for this milestone year include the launch of a major community challenge to build flexible resources to support all aspects of community life, a fun retrospective of the Foundation’s first 35 years, and several surprises to celebrate the donors, community partners, and nonprofit organizations who have contributed to the Foundation’s—and community’s—growth and success. That’s you!
Thank you so much for your support. You are part of the Foundation’s past, present, and future. So, get ready to celebrate together!
Kristin O’Malley
President and CEO
508.790.3040, Ext. 115
komalley@capecodfoundation.org
Together, we have invested more than $100 million in grants and scholarships in the Cape Cod Community. For good.
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Cape Cod Foundation
508.790.3040
261 Whites Path, Unit 2
South Yarmouth, MA 02664
info@capecodfoundation.org
