The Community Foundation for South Central New York
Connecting Donors who Care with Causes that Matter
Looking inward and outward in 2020, the Community Foundation expanded its work to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), both in our practices and in the region we serve. Those efforts build on work we started more than two years ago, when we conducted a preliminary assessment of our Board and staff and updated language Read more
In 2020, women held 26 percent of the seats in the U.S. Senate and 23.2 percent of seats in the House. Across the nation, 29.3 percent of state legislators were women, according to the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University. Those numbers are better than they used to be. (In 1981, just 12.1 percent Read more
The first message came at 1 in the morning: “Jen, it’s all gone.” Next thing Jennifer O’Brien knew, her phone was blowing up with texts. The news was heartbreaking. Our Space Park, a playground in Binghamton’s Recreation Park, designed as an accessible place of joy for people of all ages and abilities, had burned to Read more
While other nonprofits struggled to provide essential services during the pandemic, many arts organizations—theaters, museums, orchestras, dance schools, galleries, and more—simply had to close. That shutdown spurred a financial emergency. In Broome County, for example, arts organizations lost about $1 million in revenues and missed fundraising opportunities, said Nancy Barno Reynolds, executive director of the Read more
Six organizations received a total of $35,984 from the Women’s Fund in 2019 to support programs that help women and girls. Three of those awards went to programs focused on employment. For example, an $8,000 grant to Catholic Charities of Broome County funded emergency assistance to help women fuel their cars, buy work uniforms, reserve Read more
School districts invent new ways to serve their students and the broader community. The services that schools provide these days go way beyond the traditional “three Rs”. They also reach deep into our communities. One example is the Whitney Point Central School District’s Early Eagles initiative, a pre-literacy program for families of infants and toddlers. Read more
Mini-grants help agricultural businesses root out conditions that cause sickness and injury. A few years ago, experts at the New York Center for Agricultural Medicine and Health (NYCAMH) identified a flaw in their efforts to keep people who work on farms healthy and safe. NYCAMH would send a specialist to walk through a farm and Read more
Several recent grants support programs based on a simple principle: no one should go hungry. Too many people lack reliable access to nutritious food. Luckily, many community groups are working hard to meet this essential need. Take the Unatego Central School District’s backpack program, which gives students in need healthy food to take home. The Read more
Grant helps rural ambulance service attract more first responders with advanced skills. With a staff of just 18, the Hancock Ambulance Service stands ready to save lives every day, around the clock, across 164 square miles of Delaware County plus a sliver of Pennsylvania. This extremely rural region is many miles from the nearest trauma Read more
Children with special needs often can’t get appropriate support when they enter preschool. That’s part of the reason why a child in preschool is three times more likely to be expelled than a child in a K-12 school, says Deborah Fitzgerald, a professional development specialist and coach for early childhood teachers. Even when a school Read more
Each year, the Women’s Fund’s Grants Subcommittee sits down to plan its next award cycle. The 12 women on the subcommittee talk about what they hope to accomplish, based on current needs in the communities we serve. Every year, of course, the overriding goal is to support projects and programs designed to improve the lives Read more
Librarians are champs at squeezing optimal value out of every dollar in a budget. Their ingenuity makes it a special pleasure to support local libraries through the Community Foundation Library Fund. The fund was born in 2008, on the dissolution of the Broome Library Foundation. That group’s board asked the Community Foundation to take over Read more
While working on a small scale, some organizations make a deep impact on individual lives. That’s the case with two nonprofits we funded in 2018, both with a focus on empowerment. The first, Move Along, Inc., gives people with physical limitations a chance to enjoy a variety of sports. One of its programs provides adaptive Read more
A small town can play a big role in a region’s cultural life. That’s surely true of Norwich, Oxford and Oneonta, each of which hosts a musical series or venue that draws fans from miles around. Recent grants from the Community Foundation have helped small, volunteer-powered organizations in these places enrich the local arts scene Read more
Otsego Rural Housing Assistance (ORHA) helps homeowners of modest means stay in their homes and keep those dwellings comfortable and safe. Although Otsego County is small—with only about 60,000 people—the need for housing assistance there seems almost limitless, says Timothy Peters, executive director of ORHA, in Cooperstown. Beyond Cooperstown and Oneonta, Otsego is largely an Read more
Many small organizations in our region are working to preserve the environment and teach the public about conservation. We supported those efforts with several grants in 2018. For instance, we awarded $3,259 to the Michael Kudish Natural History Preserve in Stamford. Named to honor Dr. Michael Kudish, who has been researching the natural history of Read more