Nancy and Kenneth Kahn

Ken and Nancy Kahn

Modest and unassuming as they are, one might be hard pressed to learn about the public service and giving back that has been an integral part of Nancy and Kenneth Kahn’s life.

Ken worked in several different capacities for the Santa Clara County Sherriff’s Department for 30 years. Nancy spent 15 years working for the City of San Jose, including for the mayor’s office and for a City Council member, where she says, “When working for local municipalities we were, of course, always involved in something for the community and staff always pitched in. It was a good way to give back.”

Not ones to rest on their laurels, after retirement the Kahns have continued to pitch in where they can both locally and abroad. Ken volunteers at St. Vincent de Paul in Roseville, while Nancy served on the boards of Literacy Support Council of Placer County and Friends of Rocklin Library. They have both volunteered their time and labor to Habitat for Humanity as far away as Belfast, Ireland and Auckland, New Zealand.

Nancy was first introduced to Placer Community Foundation while attending the Foundation’s Nonprofit Leadership Summit. She quickly grasped the scope of PCF’s ongoing support of the nonprofit sector and saw PCF as a good solution for local community needs. The Kahns were looking for better ways of giving back locally as well as realize some tax benefits on their investments and felt that PCF offered the best of both worlds. They opened the Nancy and Kenneth Kahn Family Fund, a Donor Advised Fund, and became members of the Foundation’s Legacy Society through a gift named in their estate plan.

“We love it,” says Ken, “In helping out the community where we can, we’re learning and doing things through the Community Foundation that we wouldn’t otherwise know about.” “We’re blessed to be in a position where we can share and pay it forward,” added Nancy, “The Foundation knows the community and is at the heart of it. They know where the needs are more than we would ever know on our own.”

Inspired by their 16 year old grandson, Adam, who has started a robotics club at his school and teaches robotics to younger children at his local parks department—the Nancy and Kenneth Kahn Family Fund is donating to an upcoming Code for Hood Hackathon at Sierra College’s Hacker Lab. Code for Hood helps educate and enrich the lives of minority, low income and at risk youth to help foster STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) initiatives.

As Nancy says, “With our Donor Advised Fund at the Community Foundation we like having control over our philanthropy and steering the funds toward things we’re interested in. We feel like we’re a part of it. We also like the advantages of pooling resources with other like-minded individuals at the Foundation to get more things done, such as we did in buying a freezer for Auburn Interfaith Food Closet last year.”

The Kahns believe that giving comes back to you and that more people need to know about PCF and what it does in supporting the community and our local nonprofits.  “We give to other charities,” says Ken, “But we think that giving through Placer Community Foundation is the nucleus of being able to help locally and where the needs arise. That is our motivating factor for having a fund at the Foundation.”

And we are better for having such wonderful philanthropic people as Ken and Nancy in our community.