By Rose S. Prinzi
As you prepare your Thanksgiving feast with thoughts of your many blessings this coming Thursday, the Chautauqua Region Community Foundation would like to extend a deep, heartfelt “thank you” to our many friends who have made life a little bit easier for our local families and non-profit organizations.
We thank our countless donors who have so generously contributed to the Foundation and who have entrusted to us the responsibility of being the custodian of funds to accommodate the changing needs of our community.
We thank the hundreds of volunteers who work so diligently throughout the year on our many grants and scholarship committees, reviewing volumes of requests and applications, making sure qualified organizations and deserving students are assisted in accordance with our mission.
Such grant requests assist local non-profit organizations to provide the much needed services required to compliment our community’s focus.
The scholarships received by local students help ease the burden of college expenses for local families.
We thank our Board of Directors, past and present, who have guided the Foundation through good and bad economic times and have spent endless hours in maintaining the fidelity of the Foundation’s Founders’ intent when making decisions and developing policy.
As always, the Foundation “family” conducts its due diligence in making sure our community continues to develop and thrive. From its humble beginnings, the Community Foundation has grown to hold assets of over $50 million.
Last year alone, the Community Foundation awarded over 800 students a total of $854,743 in scholarships and distributed in excess of $1.3 million in financial assistance to more than 50 local religious and non-profit organizations from our Community Service, Field-of-Interest and other grants.
A snap-shot look at this year’s distribution include: $10,000 to the American Red Cross to aid in their North County Flood Disaster efforts last summer, $7,500 given to the Chautauqua County Humane Society to reduce animal adoption fees and $5,000 awarded to the Western New York Food Bank to purchase a freezer for the Jamestown food distribution site.
Other non-profit organizations that have been recipients of grants from the Foundation include: A Children’s Place Day Care Center for swimming lessons for their young students, Quilts for Kids through the Chautauqua County Child Advocacy Program, free vision screening for pre-school aged children to the Chautauqua Blind Association, Legal Services for Senior Citizens through the Office for the Aging and reimbursement of transportation expenses for the volunteers of the Foster Grandparent Program. These are only a fraction of the number of organizations who have benefited from the Foundation’s assistance this year alone.
But it is through the hard work of volunteers and dedicated donors who enable the Foundation to accommodate the inexhaustible number of requests received annually.
So as you count your blessings this holiday season with family and friends, we also will be saying a prayer of thanks for the many people who make it possible for the Community Foundation to continue “enriching the quality of life in the Chautauqua Region.”
For more information about the Foundation, call 661-3390 or go to www.crcfonline.org.
Happy Thanksgiving!