Community Enrichment Fund Grants to be Announced June 20th
Join the Women & Girls Fund A charitable investment in women and girls is an investment in a vibrant, healthy community for everyone. The Community Foundation’s Women & Girls Fund supports nonprofit programs and projects that help to insure that women and girls in our community are safe and healthy, educated and employed. Your donation today will help build the endowment fund to allow larger grants to be made in the future. Gifts are fully tax deductible as charitable contributions to the extent allowed by the law.
The Community Foundation will soon be awarding grants up to $20,000 to nonprofit programs that serve King George County. These grants come from the Community Enrichment Fund, created by the foundation’s Board of Governors in 2005. This unrestricted fund allows the foundation the flexibility to respond to changing community needs. In 2011 and 2012, the board decided to focus its community enrichment efforts in King George. Next year it is expected that grantmaking will be concentrated on another regional locality.
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The Community Foundation will announce the grant winners on June 20th. Grant awards will be decided with the advisement of a number of King George residents, who will draw on their own knowledge of the community in order to help inform the foundation’s decisions. Residents of King George are challenged to join this effort by donating additional money to the fund – to be used entirely for grantmaking. This is a unique opportunity to make a significant “give where you live” impact by matching your own charitable efforts with the full force of The Community Foundation’s philanthropy.
Last year, a grant from the Community Enrichment Fund supported the Ecology Club Watershed Project, a partnership between Friends of the Rappahannock, Virginia Cooperative Extension and King George County Schools. A second grant helped create a “teen room” at the King George Family YMCA. A third project, Building Healthy Teen Relationships – Dating Violence and Sexual Assault Prevention – is providing healthy relationship education for middle school age youth in a facilitated group setting. This third grant was given to a collaborative partnership lead by Rappahannock Area Office on Youth and including the King George County Department of Social Services, Department of Health and Court Service Unit, as well as Rappahannock Council on Domestic Violence, Rappahannock Council Against Sexual Assault and King George Family YMCA. For information on joining this effort by contributing to the Community Enrichment Fund, call or e-mail Lisa Biever, Program Officer, at 540.373.9292 or lisa.biever@cfrrr.org.
The vision behind this fund is simple – if one thousand women each pledge $1,000 The Community Foundation can build a $1 million endowment that will serve as a permanent asset to the region. Each year, Women and Girls Fund members have the opportunity to gather at a Live Ballot Grant Expo and meet representatives from the nonprofits who are seeking grants. Members actively choose who will receive grants from the dividends from the endowed fund. The Community Foundation is particularly grateful to Women & Girls Fund Charter Member Mary Jane O’Neill, who has underwritten many of the early grants while this fund is growing. To join the Women & Girls Fund visit The Community Foundation’s website at www.cfrrr.org or call 540.373.9292.