The Community Foundation for South Central New York
Connecting Donors who Care with Causes that Matter
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
Victims of domestic violence face many obstacles that keep them from escaping danger. There’s one challenge that might not have occurred to you, but Karen Matson knows it well. “We often hear about people who won’t leave bad situations because they don’t want their animals to be left behind,” says Matson, executive director at the Read more
To you, the Harris Memorial Library might be simply a building full of books. Library director Anne Ohman sees things differently: to her, it’s “a place full of sparks.” People come to the library, in the Village of Otego, because of the sparks they have inside—a question someone wants answered, a book someone wants to Read more
Summer in the Village of Hancock has gained a new source of excitement since 2015, when the nonprofit Hancock Partners launched “Summer Nights on the Square,” a series of Friday night performances running from June to September. Locals and tourists, plus day-trippers from as far away as Binghamton, flock to the Hancock Town Square to Read more
Something new is sprouting at Tioga Central Schools, and it’s not just the vegetables on five acres west of the football field. It’s a new program, based on the notion that when kids learn to eat healthy food, everyone benefits. “We’re planting the seeds to grow stronger kids and stronger families, and thereby a stronger Read more
Otsego was the last of the five counties to join the Community Foundation’s service area. We added it in 2007 because a potential donor there wanted to start a fund, and Otsego had no community foundation to serve that need. Since then, we’ve supported a broad range of projects in Otsego County, focused on history, Read more
The largest of our counties geographically, Delaware County is made up of small towns and villages mostly linked by rural roads, with no dominant population center. But far-flung though they may be, the people of Delaware County keep us busy with terrific grant proposals. In Walton, for example, the Paul G. and Miriam B. Mattern Read more
When the Community Foundation decided to tackle workforce development, Chenango County emerged as the perfect venue for that effort. A mostly rural county, Chenango is home to many low-income households. But it’s also home to some strong employers, such as the Raymond Corporation, Chobani and UHS Chenango Memorial Hospital. Chenango County suffers from a disconnect Read more
The Community Foundation was born in Broome County, but we’ve always pursued a multi-county mission. In 1997, the board of directors of the Hoyt Foundation and its executive director, Judith Peckham, conceived the Community Foundation as a way to expand Hoyt’s reach into counties around Broome that had no community foundations of their own. Challenged Read more
In Tioga County, community spirit goes a long way. For a prime illustration, consider how some of the county’s human services agencies interweave their separate social safety nets to make a bigger, stronger one. “People come to us for food and then they tell us they need a furnace. We’re able to make that happen Read more
When you open a special fund with the Community Foundation, you chart your own course as a philanthropist. You might create the fund to honor someone you have loved or admired. You’ll focus your support on an issue that speaks to your heart, and you’ll build for the long term, assured that the good you Read more