Community Foundation Update (08/15/20)

Alabama

The Community Foundation of Greater Birmingham has announced $55,000 in grants through its Remy Fund for Pets and Animal Services. Now in its tenth year, the fund has awarded a total of $400,000 in support of organizations in Jefferson, Shelby, St. Clair, Blount, and Walker counties working to help companion animals (dogs, cats, and horses). Grant recipients include Alabama Spay Neuter, Bama Bully Rescue, MomaKat Rescue, and Special Equestrians.

Connecticut

The Hartford Foundation for Public Giving has announced the launch of CATALYST for the ARTS, an initiative aimed at providing local arts groups with helpful tools and techniques they can use to manage their operations during the COVID-19 pandemic. A partnership between the foundation, Fathom, and Free Center/CO:LAB, the program aims to foster more impactful collaborations and influential leadership across the region's arts sector. According to the foundation, a recent survey found that Hartford-area arts organizations have seen a more than 60 percent reduction in employment during the public health crisis. Starting this fall, up to fifteen organizations selected through a competitive application process will be invited participate in weekly ninety-minute sessions designed to help them think in new ways, make new connections, and inspire new possibilities.

Georgia

The Greater Atlanta COVID-19 Response and Recovery Fund, a joint effort of the Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta and United Way of Greater Atlanta, has announced a seventh round of emergency grants. To date, the fund has raised more than $25 million and awarded more than $18.4 million to over three hundred nonprofits. Totaling $1.125 million, the latest grants were awarded to ten organizations working to address housing-related needs in the region.

Iowa

The Pottawattamie County Community Foundation and Iowa West Foundation have announced a further expansion of BLink WiFi, a free community WiFi initiative in Council Bluffs. With support from the Southwest Iowa COVID-19 Response Fund — an initiative of the two foundations — and contributions from the Peter Kiewit Foundation and City of Council Bluffs totaling $400,000, the Council Bluffs Community School District will leverage CARES Act funding to accelerate planned expansions of connectivity in the Rue and Longfellow Elementary School neighborhoods.

Kentucky

The Community Foundation of Louisville has announced that senior vice president and chief strategy officer Trisha Finnegan has been named a 2020-21 Fulcrum Fellowship recipient by the Center for Community Investment at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. The year-long leadership development opportunity brings together sixteen current and emerging leaders from a range of fields who are committed to using community investment to tackle challenges related to racial inequity and economic marginalization.

Louisiana

The Greater New Orleans Foundation has announced five August grants totaling $24,150, including two from the Fertel Foundation and a nursing scholarship made in memory of Jo Smith. Recipients include Type Media, Peace Studio, the University of Holy Cross, the University of Louisiana Lafayette, and the LSU Health Sciences Center.

Maine

The Maine Community Foundation and various local donors have provided support for a group of high school students and their teachers to fabricate face shields, the Penobscot Bay Press reports. Since March, the Fab Lab has used a 3D printer to manufacture four thousand face shields as part of the school-based COVID-19 PPE Project and has orders for another five hundred. From face shields, the project has expanded to ear savers — adjustable hooks for the elastic straps on face masks that otherwise cause discomfort — and the team is considering whether to add child-size face shields and desk shields for classrooms to its lineup.

Massachusetts

The South Coast Community Foundation (formerly the Community Foundation of Southeastern Massachusetts) in New Bedford has announced grants totaling more than $4.7 million to eighty-two local nonprofits. Through a partnership with the Massachusetts COVID-19 Relief Fund and in partnership with regional community foundations and local nonprofit leaders, the foundation awarded grants totaling $1.26 million to thirty-four organizations working to respond to local COVID-related needs. Grant recipients include Angels Anonymous, Round the Bend Farm, Citizens for Citizens, and Saint Anne's Food Pantry.

Ohio

The Dayton Foundation has announced a $70,000 grant to Learn to Earn Dayton. Combined with grants from the Mathile Family, Frank M. Tait, Charles D. Berry, Berry Family, and Louise Kramer foundations and the COVID-19 Response Fund for Greater Dayton, the grant boosts the total raised to buy Chromebooks for schools in Dayton and Montgomery County's high-poverty school districts to more than $300,000.

Pennsylvania

The Pittsburgh Foundation has announced that its Emergency Action Fund has raised a total of $9 million for COVID-19 relief efforts in the region, with most of it already distributed to more than three hundred local nonprofits. After two rounds of grantmaking in May, $8.3 million had been awarded to two hundred and twenty-eight nonprofits, government agencies, and community healthcare providers to assist vulnerable residents of the region whose lifelines to food, shelter, medicine, and employment were at risk due to the coronavirus. And though the application window for funding closed after the first two rounds, the portal remained open for foundations, corporations, and individuals to donate in support of future grantmaking rounds.

Puerto Rico

The Foundation for Puerto Rico has joined forces with the Clinton Global Initiative Action Network to conduct a virtual series of educational seminars focused on strengthening the resilience of small businesses on the island, News Is My Business reports. Each of the four workshops, which ended earlier this week, were focused on a different sector of the territory's economy (retail stores, restaurants and food service, artists and artisans, tourism and hospitality).

Washington

The Seattle Foundation has announced a two-year, $500,000 investment in support of Seattle Public School's Department of African American Male Achievement (AAMA). Launched in 2019, the department will conduct listening and learning sessions with students, families, and the broader community over the coming months that will inform the development of a multiyear plan and bring coherence to the district's and community's efforts to support every Black male student in the district. The foundation's support is part of a $1.86 million commitment made by a group of local philanthropies and corporations.