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This update covers January - March 2011
National Community Foundation Update, First Qt 2011
AIDS
The Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta has announced that the Atlanta AIDS Partnership, a joint project it leads with the United Way of Metropolitan Atlanta, has received a grant from AIDS United through its Access to Care initiative. The grant will support the integration of HIV care into primary healthcare settings in Atlanta's most affected communities.
Arts
The Maine College of Art has announced the 2011 recipients of grants from the Belvedere Fund for Professional Development in the Field of Crafts, which MECA established at the Ellsworth-based Maine Community Foundation in 2008 through a bequest from Deborah Pulliam. The fund provides grants of up to $1,500 to MECA alumni who hold a BFA degree and have graduated within the last ten years.
The Old Forge Arts Center has received a grant of $100,000 from the Utica-based Community Foundation of Herkimer and Oneida Counties, the Herkimer Telegram reports. The grant will support the hiring of performing arts and special events managers and will facilitate the development of those areas.
The Pittsburgh Foundation has announced the launch of a fund, Advancing Black Art in Pittsburgh, designed to strengthen funding resources that support the work of local organizations and individuals focused primarily on the art of African Americans. The foundation and the Heinz Endowments have each awarded an initial $325,000 to establish the fund, which will be administered by the Pittsburgh Foundation and will award grants twice a year, beginning in the spring of 2011.
The Westport Country Playhouse has received $20,000 from the Fairfield County Community Foundation in support of its 2011 season and the development of a strategic plan, Broadway World reports. The playhouse serves an annual audience of sixty thousand people, including four thousand students.
The Coastal Bend Community Foundation in Corpus Christi has awarded $150,000 to help fund visual and performing arts projects around the area. The beneficiaries of the Coastal Bend Community Foundation Art Grant, which was supported by donations from the public, are the Art Center of Corpus Christi, the Art Museum of South Texas, the Beeville Community Chorus, the Beeville Concert Association, the Cathedral Concert Series, the Corpus Christi Chamber Music Society, the Corpus Christi Symphony Orchestra, K-Space Contemporary, the Kingsville Symphony Orchestra, and South Texas Public Broadcasting.
Award
The Detroit-based Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan has announced the establishment of the Mariam C. Noland Award for Nonprofit Leadership in honor of president Mariam Noland's twenty-five years of service to the foundation and the region. Beginning in 2011, the annual award will recognize a nonprofit executive who has provided outstanding leadership, not only to their own organization but to the wider nonprofit community. The foundation will award $10,000 to the winner's organization, with a preference that the organization uses the funds to enable the recipient to attend professional continuing education, take a sabbatical for career rejuvenation, or engage in philanthropic leadership activities.
Basic needs
The Greater Milwaukee Foundation has announced $400,000 in grants through its Basic Needs Fund, which provides supplemental support to organizations that provide emergency assistance. In addition, the Faye McBeath Foundation and the Ceres Foundation, a supporting organization of GMF, each committed $50,000. Established in 2008 in response to the economic downturn, the Basic Needs Fund has awarded a total of $975,000, including $202,500 to emergency foodbanks, $522,600 to homeless shelters, $70,000 for emergency housing assistance and clothing, and $180,000 for a central access system to connect individuals and families with emergency shelter.
The Los Angeles-based California Community Foundation has announced nearly $222,000 in grants from its Critical Needs Fund, which was created in 2010 to aid nonprofits serving residents of Los Angeles County who are in dire conditions as a direct result of the economic downturn.The fund has awarded more than $586,000 to twenty-six organizations.
The Providence-based Rhode Island Foundation has announced twelve grants totaling $300,000 to organizations and coalitions working to help provide emergency assistance to families and individuals who are struggling to meet basic needs.
The Seattle Foundation has announce that it awarded four grants totaling more than $193,000 through its Building Resilience Initiative, which was launched in late 2008 to help King County residents weather the economic downturn.
The Yarmouthport-based Cape Cod Foundation has announced five grants totaling $30,000 through its 2010 Strategic Focus program to support the sustainability and long-term planning efforts of local organizations working to address homelessness, hunger, and other critical needs on the Cape.
The Community Foundation of Sarasota County has announced that for the second consecutive year it raised a total of $1.52 million through the Season of Sharing campaign to assist families at risk of homelessness in Charlotte, De Soto, Sarasota, and Manatee counties. Gifts include $50,000 from the William G. and Marie Selby Foundation and a one-to-one match of up to $500,000 for any new and increased gifts from the Patterson Foundation.
For the first time, the Twin Lakes Community Foundation, an affiliate of the Little Rock-based Arkansas Community Foundation, will be accepting applications online for its Giving Tree and Stop Hunger Endowment grant programs
CF growth/ fundraising
Despite the economic volatility of the past two years, the assets of the Hudson-based St. Croix Valley Foundation have exceeded $20 million, Established in 1995, the foundation has made almost $11 million in grants to organizations in the valley and recently announced a new competitive health and wellness grant program that will focus on stemming childhood obesity by encouraging outside exercise.
The Oshkosh Area Community Foundation has announced that during 2010 it awarded $10,000 to community groups through its Coins for Community Web initiative. The interactive game allows Web users to drag and drop virtual coins into piggy banks representing groups with endowment funds at the foundation. The group with the most coins at the end of the month wins a $1,000 grant from the foundation. In 2010, the foundation's Web site traffic increased 525 percent year-over-year, with Coins for Community driving 95 percent of total page views on the site.
The Community Foundation of Kankakee River Valley reached the $1 million milestone in its current fundraising drive. Thanks to an agreement with the Grand Victoria Foundation, that total was automatically matched.
Community Development
The Community Foundation of Greater Birmingham has announced the launch of Prize2theFuture, which will award a total of $72,000 for the best ideas on how to transform a city parking lot adjacent to Railroad Park. The first-prize winner will receive $50,000, second place will get $10,000, third place will receive $5,000, and the remaining finalists will receive $1,000 each.
The Greater Milwaukee Foundation has announced grants totaling $110,000 for neighborhood improvement projects.
The Rockford-based Community Foundation of Northern Illinois has announced more than $15,000 through its Neighborhood Grants program.
Day of Giving
The Greensburg-based Community Foundation of Westmoreland County, an affiliate of the Pittsburgh Foundation, has announced that more than 950 donors contributed a total of nearly $300,000 to county nonprofits over a fifteen-hour period during Westmoreland's Day of Giving on December 1. The online event raised more than $197,000, which was matched by a $100,000 grant from CFWC.
Disaster
The Nashville-area Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee has announced that its two disaster funds have awarded a total of almost $5.5 million in flood relief to more than one hundred organizations since the May 2010 floods.
Diversity
The Greater New Orleans Foundation is partnering with the Human Rights Campaign, Puentes, the Vietnamese American Youth Leaders Association, and the Urban League of Greater New Orleans in an online-only giving circle called the Neutral Ground. The group aims to encourage participants to engage in an online dialogue about inter-community issues relating to race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation, and will award grants to support important work in these areas. To date, the giving circle has raised a total of $10,000.
Employment
The Greater New Orleans Foundation and the city of New Orleans received funding from the National Fund for Workforce Solutions and its national implementation partner Jobs for the Future to develop innovative approaches to job training and career support. The foundation was awarded $300,000 over two years to support an expansion of its efforts to build partnerships with employers and focus on industry sectors important to the local economy.
Energy
The Vermont Community Foundation awarded real-time energy monitors to the Charlotte Town Energy Committee, the Mad River Valley's Localvolts, and the Waterbury Local Energy Action Partnership (LEAP) to develop community-based projects. The recipients were selected based on their ability to make efficient use of the technology, their plans to engage their communities in energy conservation and efficiency, and their area's demonstrated efforts to reduce energy use. The monitoring technology includes display and data-logging software that update every second, allowing users to view their energy consumption instantaneously. Each community will use the monitors to implement projects that help measure electricity use and identify opportunities for energy savings in homes, businesses, and community buildings.
Grantmaking
The Akron Community Foundation has announced grants totaling nearly $470,000, including more than $200,000 to support early learning initiatives.
The Greater Green Bay Community Foundation has announced thirty-two grants to local nonprofit and school programs totaling more than $108,000. The grants were awarded through the Fund for Greater Green Bay, a collection of field of interest and unrestricted funds of the GGBCF, and in partnership with generous donors who have funds at the foundation.
The Greater New Orleans Foundation announced grants to forty-two organizations through the IMPACT 2010 program, its largest discretionary grants program. In partnership with donors, GNOF awards grants averaging $20,000 to organizations working in the areas of arts and culture, civic engagement, education, health, human and social services, and youth development.
The Hartford Foundation for Public Giving announced 63 grants totaling more than $780,000 to area food and shelter programs. The total includes $300,000 from the Beatrice Fox Auerbach Foundation Fund, established at the community foundation in 2000 by heirs of the longtime Hartford department store owner and philanthropist.
The Hilton Head Island Foundation Endowment Fund, part of the Community Foundation of the Lowcountry, has awarded more than $136,000 in grants .
The Middletown Community Foundation has announced nineteen grants totaling more than $155,000, raising its total for the year to more than $2 million. .
The Mountain View-based Silicon Valley Community Foundation has announced grants totaling more than $850,000 to nonprofits, adult schools, and community colleges in San Mateo and Santa Clara counties working to provide instruction in English as a second language or vocational English training.
The Nashville-based Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee has announced grants totaling more than $756,000 to 154 organizations through its annual discretionary grantmaking process.
GlaxoSmithKline, whose U.S. headquarters are in Research Triangle Park, and the Durham-based Triangle Community Foundation have announced RFPs for the third annual GlaxoSmithKline IMPACT Awards program, which provides grants of $40,000 to community nonprofits in the state working to improve access to health care.
Health / Environmental / Science
The Glassboro-based Community Foundation of South Jersey has awarded $17,500 to Robins' Nest for its nurse family partnership program.
The Novato-based Marin Community Foundation has announced a $250,000 grant from its Sutter Health Access to Care Fund to help prevent and detect disease among uninsured low-income residents of Marin County. Since the donor-advised fund was established last year in a partnership between the foundation and the Sutter Health network, it has awarded a total of $2 million to support a wide range of health services for uninsured residents of the county.
The Duluth-based Community Foundation for Northeast Georgia has awarded a five-year, $50,000 grant to the Gwinnett Tech Foundation to support the Legacy of Lives capital campaign for the new Life Sciences Center at Gwinnett Technical College.
The New York Community Trust has announced that the first Lancelot M. Berkeley - New York Community Trust Prize in Astronomy
The Pittsburgh Foundation and the Sprout Fund have announced grants totaling $190,000 to twenty new biodiversity projects. T
Latino
A group of citizens in northeastern Oregon has formed to help build bridges between the growing Latino population and the rest of the community. A steering committee has been established that aims to create a new chapter of the Oregon Community Foundation in Umatilla and Morrow counties. The group is working to develop a steering committee, identify grant opportunities, and hire a part-time coordinator.
The Hartford Foundation for Public Giving has announced that it will hold a free-to-the-public forum on November 30 to discuss the effect of the state's education gap, which it calls the worst in the country, on Hispanic students. Sponsored by the foundation's Latino Endowment Fund.
LGBT
The Brooks Fund of the Nashville-based Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee was awarded the American Advertising Federation Nashville's ADDY award for its 2009 annual report, Out and About Newspaper reports. The fund works to encourage the inclusion, acceptance, and recognition of Middle Tennessee's lesbian and gay citizens by supporting a variety of nonprofit programs in the area that benefit the GLBT community. The foundation also was recognized for a marketing piece related to its efforts to help residents after floods devastated the area in 2010.
Media
The Pittsburgh Foundation has announced that it will launch an online news service during the summer to provide in-depth reports on issues that affect the Pittsburgh region. Supported in part by a grant of $253,000 from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and $325,000 from the Pittsburgh Foundation, the site will be managed by the Pittsburgh Filmmakers group and will seek to work with regional broadcast and print media partners. Following the model of other nonprofit news groups, the site initially will use a core of independent freelance journalists for news and feature story assignments, and will employ a full-time editor and Web content manager.
Rural poverty
The Springfield-based Community Foundation of the Ozarks has announced that, in partnership with Commerce Trust, it awarded grants totaling $105,000 to twelve regional organizations working to address rural poverty issues through its Louis L. and Julia Dorothy Coover Regional Grantmaking Program.
Women
The Raleigh-based North Carolina Community Foundation has announced that at the end of 2010 it awarded grants of $9,000 each to Albemarle Hopeline, Girls Incorporated of the Albemarle, the Healing Place of Wake County, My Sister's House, ARTS North Carolina, and Domestic Violence Shelter and Services. The grants are part of the foundation's statewide Women's Fund, which provides support for organizations working on women's health and leadership issues.
The Women's Fund of the Greater Cincinnati Foundation has announced the March launch of its Mastermind Group, which will provide a series of facilitated meetings and resources for area corporations interested in creating or expanding a women's leadership program. Members will be part of a year-long roundtable project that explores topics such as developing a business case for creating a women's leadership program, creating a task force, designing executive presentations, developing a communications plans, and creating metrics for measuring the business impact of recruiting, retaining, and advancing women.
Youth
NW Natural, a regional energy company, has announced a $10,000 grant to the Portland-based Oregon Community Foundation to help boost the foundation's Community 101 youth philanthropy program. The grant will provide $5,000 each to the student grantmaking programs at Roosevelt High School and Portland YouthBuilders. In the program, students work together to identify community needs, research nonprofits, conduct site visits, review grant applications, participate in community service, and make funding decisions. The grant will support organizations working in the areas of education, healthy families, or arts and culture.
The Boston Foundation has announced the launch of the CHAMPS (Coaches Helping Athletes Through Mentoring and Positive Sports) initiative, which is designed to strengthen existing out-of-school sports programs and help create new programs where they don't exist, as well as strengthen the ability of neighborhood coaches to serve as leaders and mentors for young people. Piloted last year in East Boston, the program will be introduced to additional neighborhoods starting with Dorchester.
The Community Foundation of Santa Cruz County has awarded $15,000 through its David E. Davis Fund to enable the Watsonville Community Band to provide lessons, band camp, and uniform pieces to area youth, the Santa Cruz Sentinel reports.
The Greater Cincinnati Foundation has announced that it is accepting applications for its two Grants for Kids programs, Learning Links and Summertime Kids, which provide grants of up to $1,000 to schools and nonprofits for special projects. Deadlines are March 21 for the Summertime Kids program and May 6 for Learning Links.
