Dear friends:
Summer is flying by at the Community Foundation! Here are just a few things keeping Foundation staff busy right now:
- The annual Scholarship Reception, held July 23 at SUNY College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering, brings together scholarship recipients with the donors who have generously established scholarship funds through the Foundation. In partnership with the Foundation’s affiliates, the Bethlehem Central Community Foundation and the Niskayuna Community Foundation, as well as the Phyllis E. Dake Make Your Own Scholarship Fund, the Community Foundation awarded nearly $340,000 to more than 170 local students in 2014. Click here to see photos from the 2014 Scholarship Reception.
- The conclusion of educational sessions for the 2014 Capacity Building Mini-Grant Program. During these three-hour sessions, held once each month from April to July, executive directors and board members from 50 local nonprofit organizations were trained in many aspects of governance and board relations by the New York Council on Nonprofits. Organizations which had representatives attend at least three out of four sessions are now eligible for small grants, administered by the Community Foundation, to fund capacity-building initiatives, such as management training, infrastructure improvements or legal assistance for mergers or other capacity-building activities.
- The Community Foundation is coming to the end of their current strategic planning process. Since April, Foundation staff and volunteers have worked together to develop a road map for the next several years of Community Foundation growth and activity. The Foundation will issue this new strategic plan in the fall, so stay tuned!
Karen Bilowith, President and CEO