Anne and Bob Zelle’s Legacy of Trust, Generosity, & Community
What is the legacy you want to leave behind? For Anne and Bob Zelle, it was built on trust, generosity, and a belief in the power of community.
Introduced to CFMT in 1994 by one of our founders, Betty Brown, the Zelles gave their first gift to The Women’s Fund. In 1999, they made the visionary decision to include CFMT in their estate plans, establishing what has been our most significant planned gift to date.
The Zelle’s commitment only deepened over the years. Bob joined CFMT’s board in the late 1990s and served as a trustee until his death in 2010.
Before the majority of the Zelle estate was realized, CFMT’s Community Impact grantmaking totaled $1.4 million annually. Just two years after receiving their gift, that amount rose to more than $2.5 million.
In 2024, their purpose-driven and trust-based funds played a key role in CFMT’s reimagined grantmaking strategy, anchoring efforts to address emerging community challenges.
Because the Zelles trusted CFMT’s local expertise to direct their grantmaking where it would do the most good, their legacy lives on through five endowment funds that are part of the Community Impact Grantmaking cycle each year.
Over the past decade alone, nearly 500 different nonprofit organizations have received $8 million in grants from these funds, and the grant totals will grow exponentially with each passing decade.
The Zelle’s generosity is felt in many other ways throughout CFMT, with existing funds and initiatives, and an additional set of funds they established to support some of their favorite organizations — 10 in all — designated for their church, their son’s alma mater, and a collection of other beloved nonprofits. Annual distributions totaling $2.7 million have been made to these favorite organizations since 2016.
