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A Message from Our Director
George Ferrari
This month I will make my annual trek to the Council on Foundations' national conference for community foundations. It is a time to refresh, renew, and regroup with an amazing array of professionals dedicated to using local philanthropy to solve problems and achieve a greater quality of life for all in their home communities. I often find us to be from one of the smallest areas with a community foundation and among some of the youngest foundations. Though no place beats Tompkins County for ambition, civic engagement and powerful results. The ideas, creativity and potential are endless. I will be attending a special gathering of CEOs to focus on the unique roles of community foundations in leadership strategy for building stronger communities. Let me know what you would like me to explore with our colleagues and their older and larger foundations.
Philanthropy Magnified every day.
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Spotlight Grant
Written by Leigh Ann Wilson,
Class of 2013 Ithaca College/Community Foundation volunteer
For the past ten years The Family & Children's Service of Ithaca have been funding a Grand/Parent Support Group with help of foundations and corporations who share similar interests. This Support Group was developed for the purpose of aiding grandparents who are raising their grandchildren after encountering a traumatic separation from a parent/s. The group meets once a month and is led by clinician from the Family & Children's Service. Group meetings are designed to relieve and lessen the helplessness a grandparent may feel after enduring a family crisis and taking on the responsibility of their grandchildren. This phenomenon is one that is growing nationally and becoming a pressing issue. The support group is currently assisting 10 grandparents caring for about 14 grandchildren with varying separations situations. This support group is important to Tompkins County because it the only one of its kind. It is open to the public and even with its very limited marketing is steadily rising in participation. At the 2012 Howland award Ceremony the Community Foundation awarded The Grand/Parents Support Group with a grant that will help ensure the programs existence and will aid in offering grandchildren the opportunity to a happy, healthy and prolific life.
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Grandparents Raising Grandchildren:
Study Find Childcare Assistance Growing
Huffington Post 9/9/2012
Some 60 percent of grandparents served as caregivers to their grandchildren over a ten-year period, and of that group, a whopping 70 percent offered care for two years or more, according to a new study from the University of Chicago based on a National Institute on Aging survey of more than 13,000 people age 50 and older.
"Our findings show that different groups of grandparents are likely to provide different types of care," noted Linda Waite, sociology professor at the University of Chicago, in a statement. "Importantly grandparents with less income and less education, or who are from minority groups, are more likely to take on care for their grandchildren." Waite's findings appear in the September issue of the Journal of Family Issues.
Census data show that 8 percent of grandparents share a household with a grandchild, and 2.7 million grandparents provide for the bulk of their grandchildren's needs.
Read more click here: grandparents raising grandchildren
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Around Tompkins County....
"Thank you again for holding the grant award celebrations around the county. It was wonderful to go to the Groton Library for our spring award."
Karen Jewett-Bennett, Director of Operations, Sustainable Tompkins |
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Rethinking Collective Impact
Huffington Post
Emmett D. Carson ,CEO,
Silicon Valley Community Foundation
Posted: 08/31/2012 5:06 pm
Communities across the nation are in desperate trouble. Local and state governments are broke, roads and bridges are crumbling, public education is failing, foreclosures are continuing and cultural institutions are closing. In this environment, it is not surprising that nonprofit organizations and foundations would be motivated to pursue any strategy that would enable them to utilize their existing resources and achieve results beyond what they could individually accomplish. This may help explain why, since its introduction over a year ago, collective impact has transformed from a promising idea undergoing field testing in various communities to being widely accepted as a proven approach for solving challenging systemic issues.
The concept of collective impact appears to be at a fever pitch throughout the nonprofit sector. Collective impact is center stage at nonprofit and foundation conferences and there are now webinars, seminars and trainings about how to implement this approach. Unfortunately, a close examination of the concept suggests that even under ideal conditions it appears difficult to achieve and, in some cases, may undermine key values of the nonprofit sector.
Collective Impact, as described by John Kania and Mark Kramer in the Winter 2011 Stanford Social Innovation Review, represents more than the routine cross sector collaborations involving foundations, nonprofits, businesses and government. Its key characteristics are: a common agenda, an agreed upon measurement system, centralized infrastructure with a dedicated project staff, mutually reinforcing activities and ongoing communications among participants.
Routine collaborations among foundations, nonprofits and others are difficult to pull off successfully. They require developing shared interests and strategies while simultaneously agreeing on how disputes will be resolved and credit or blame will be shared. Even when cross sector collaborations do form, collaboration itself does not guarantee that the actual project will achieve the desired results.
Collective impact envisions an even higher standard of collaboration that requires long-term commitment and consensus from all.
Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/emmett-d-carson/rethinking-collective-imp_b_1847839.html |
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Who We Are
Community foundations are not-for-profit organizations founded and staffed by people who are dedicated to seeking out what is needed in our community and what is valuable about Tompkins County and to helping those valuable assets grow important results. We understand our community's needs and help you to turn your charitable passions into results oriented philanthropy. We show donors how to make your gifts go further and accomplish more.
Contact George Ferrari, Community Foundation of Tompkins County, Executive Director or call 607-272-9333 if you would like to explore ways for the Community Foundation to assist you in making your philanthropic dreams a reality for Tompkins County.
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MARK THE DATE!
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2012 Fall Grant Cycle
"Excellence in the New Economic Era"
Application deadline:
September 19, 2012
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Women's Fund
Fall Gathering
"Conversations, Women Who Make a Difference"
Thursday, November 8th
6:30pm-8:30pm
at the Cinemopolis |
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Celebrate
Grandparents Day
September 9th
Become a
Grant Patron of the
Children & Youth Fund. |
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Board Member
of the Month
Nancy Potter
Community
Relations
Committee
With a passion for family and community development, Nancy has dedicated 3+ decades with Cornell Cooperative Extension in Tompkins County to community-based learning and convening collaborations that build on families' strengths and create supportive communities for children and families. These initiatives have benefitted from the generosity of local assets which leverage resources from external funders. She believes the Community Foundation plays an important role in developing awareness of local issues for which local philanthropy can stimulate innovative action. This creates a dynamic relationship among those who are impacted, those who donate, and those who facilitate effective responses. Nancy values being an active part of creating awareness of the issues and stimulating action on those issues. She connects to the community through the Ithaca Rotary Club, St Paul's United Methodist Church, the West Danby Community Association, and other non-profit boards. |
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Meet the Board
Board Chair
Linda W. Madeo
Vice Board Chair
Robin Masson
Secretary
Mary Berens
Treasurer
David Squires
Immediate Past Chair
Mariette Geldenhuys
Members Richard Banks
Jacki Barr
Max Brown
Tom Colbert
Caroline Cox
Randy Ehrenberg
Jennifer Gabriel
Bob Jewell
Laurie Linn
Alan Mathios
Ed Morton
Bill Murphy
Nancy Potter
John Rogers
Mickie Sanders-Jauquet
Carol Travis
Linda Wagenet
Julie Waters
Amy Yale-Loehr
Incorporating Board
Jeff Furman
Howard Hartnett
Bill Myers
Robert Swieringa
John Semmler
Diane Shafer
Staff
Executive Director
George Ferrari, Jr.
Program Officer
Janet Cotraccia
Donor Relations Officer
Amy LeViere |
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