Nonprofit news roundup, 05.17.13

May 17, 2013 By in North Carolina Leave a comment

Rodriguez promoted at Triangle Community Foundation

Sandra Rodriguez, a donor engagement officer at Triangle Community Foundation, has been promoted to director of donor engagement, and Veronica Hemmingway has been promoted to senior donor engagement officer from donor engagement officer.

Rodriguez, a native of Costa Rica and former associate director of El Pueblo in Raleigh, has worked at the Foundation for over six years.

She and Hemmingway will continue to work with Foundation donors and fundholders to help them support causes they care about as well as the Foundation’s community initiatives.

Salvation Army of Winston-Salem names development director

Matthew Linville, former associate director of planned giving for the North and South Carolina Division of The Salvation Army, has been named director of development for The Salvation Army of Winston-Salem.

The Salvation Army of Winston-Salem also recently added three new members to its local volunteer Advisory Board, including Frank Rayburn, accounting professor emeritus from the University of Alabama at Birmingham; Jim Ruffin, who recently retired from Landmark Builders; and Rob Welch, a vice president at I.L. Long Construction in Winston-Salem.

Peck returns to Capstone Advancement Partners

Brigitte Roufail Peck, a founder of Capstone Advancement Partners in Charlotte and most recently assistant director of institutional advancement for The Westminster Schools in Atlanta, has rejoined the consulting firm as senior consultant and will be serving clients throughout the Southeast from Atlanta.

Ryba leaving John Avery Boys and Girls Club

Sheila Ryba resigned as chief professional officer at John Avery Boys and Girls Club in Durham to start her own business, Lion’s Share Consulting. She will be working with the board and staff at the Boys and Girls Club during a transition period.

Lenovo, Kramden Institute partner to donate computers

Lenovo partnered with Kramden Institute in Durham to refurbish and donate computers to 75 students in families stationed at Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point. Last year, Lenovo and the Kramden Institute refurbished and donated computers at the U.S. Army installation at Fort Bragg and at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base.

SECU Family House names development associate

Colleen Weiss, former executive eirector of the Forsyth Humane Society, has been named development associate for SECU Family House in Winston-Salem. SECU Family House provides lodging for families and patients who are in Winston-Salem for medical care.

High Point Boys & Girls Clubs honored

Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater High Point received the Marketing and Communications Award from Boys & Girls Clubs of America for implementing the best marketing strategy for publicity/media relations, Great Futures Start Here, and comprehensive marketing strategy.

Wells Fargo supports tree plantings in Sandhills

With support from Wells Fargo, Arbor Day Foundation has completed the replanting of tens of thousands of longleaf pine trees in the North Carolina Sandhills, restoring vital forestland and ecosystems in the fire-prone community.

The North Carolina coast contains vast stretches of longleaf pine trees, but these forests have shrunk to just four percent of their original range over the past 50 years.

The Foundation and Wells Fargo supported the planting of 400 trees an acre, for a total of 50,000 trees this spring.

The five-year relationship between Wells Fargo and the Arbor Day Foundation has resulted in the planting of 630,000 trees in forests and communities throughout the U.S.

Habitat Charlotte honors seven founding churches

Habitat for Humanity of Charlotte has honored seven churches that founded the organization 30 years ago.

Those churches, representing six different denominations, came together over the need to address the lack of decent, affordable housing available to low-income families paying a disproportionate percent of take-home pay on rent, with very little left for basic family needs.

Habitat’s founding churches include Christ Episcopal, Covenant Presbyterian, Little Church on the Lane, Myers Park Baptist, Myers Park Presbyterian, Myers Park United Methodist and St. Mark’s Lutheran.

Asheville funder makes early childhood grants

Community Foundation of Western North Carolina, which is based in Asheville and serves 18 counties, awarded two $75,000 grants focusing on early childhood development to Region A Partnership for Children, which serves the state’s seven most western counties and on the Qualla Boundary, and to Southwestern Child Development Commission, which is based in Webster and serves 13 counties.

Winston-Salem Foundation awards $187,725

The Winston-Salem Foundation awarded eight Community Grants totaling $187,725 to organizations that serve people in Forsyth County and work in the areas of the arts and culture, education, the environment, health, human services, public interest, and recreation.

Urban Ministries to hold 9th annual Tour D’Coop

Urban Ministries of  Wake County will hold its ninth annual Tour D’ Coop event, a one-day tour of chicken coops and urban farms, on May 18 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. The event collects non-perishable food items and raises money for Urban Ministries, a Raleigh nonprofit that provides essential services to the homeless, hungry and uninsured individuals in Wake County.

NCCJ of the Piedmont Triad to honor Sandra Daye Hughes

NCCJ of the Piedmont Triad will honor Sandra Daye Hughes, a Greensboro journalist and community advocate, with the 2013 Brotherhood/Sisterhood Citation Award on November 7.

Hughes’ career at WFMY News 2 spanned forty years, beginning in 1972 as a general assignment reporter and then serving from 1985 to 1990 as community affairs manager while also serving as co-host of the “Good Morning Show.”

She returned to the newsroom in 1990 to anchor the evening news.

After retiring from the station, Hughes moved to her alma mater, North Carolina A&T State University, where she is teaching journalism.

Raleigh chapter of National Christian Foundation gives $181,488

The Raleigh chapter of the National Christian Foundation has given $181,488 since 2005 to Compassion International through 87 grants from local givers. Grants to the charity directly supplement an impoverished child’s education and health expenses or support programs in which the child participates. At the national level, the Foundation has facilitated over $656,000 in giving  to Compassion International since 2005.

Restrictive covenant at issue in possible coliseum sale

The Winston-Salem Foundation Committee, governing body for the Winston-Salem Foundation, has voiced concerns about the possible sale of the Lawrence Joel Veterans Memorial Coliseum.

The Committee convened for a called meeting on May 13 to review a draft of the restrictive covenant between its owner, the City of Winston-Salem, and its prospective buyer, Wake Forest University related to the potential sale.

A tentative agreement on the proposed sale would maintain access to specific events such as high school graduations that have been held at the Coliseum over the years.

Since 1969, the Foundation has held a reversionary interest in the property to ensure the original donors’ intent that the property be available for public events.

After consultation with the Foundation’s Trustee and the Foundation’s legal counsel, the Foundation says, “it was determined that there are concerns related to continued public access.”

Because the land was acquired with private donations to benefit the public, the Foundation is concerned that “the public should continue to have access to the facility,” says Cici Fulton, director of marketing and communications for the Foundation.

The Foundation says it and the Trustee still are waiting for drafts of the parking documents and the deed of transfer.

No decision was reached at the meeting on the release of the reversionary interest.

The Foundation says it will continue to work with the city to address the concerns.

Smithfield’s ships barbecue to U.S. troops in Afghanistan

Smithfield’s Chicken ‘N Bar-B-Q recently shipped care packages with ingredients needed to prepare its eastern North Carolina-style chicken, barbecue and other southern staples to U.S. troops stationed in Afghanistan.

Savvy change agents seen as key to ‘great’ fundraising

May 16, 2013 By in Fundraising, Research Tags: , , , Leave a comment

Outstanding fundraising is driven by exceptional leaders committed to transforming the way their organizations do business, a new report says.

Indispensable to successful fundraising are passion for the work and belief in what it can achieve, says Great Fundraising, a British-based report commissioned by Clayton Burnett and Associates.

Keys to building great fundraising organizations, the report says, include creation of an inspired and supported team; development of an organizational structure rooted in functionality; a focus on donors; a culture of learning; and leaders who think holistically and work for change.

What elevates “good fundraising to outstanding fundraising” is “the quality of thinking each leader was able to generate,” says the report, which was written by Adrian Sargeant, a fundraising consultant who is on leave as professor of fundraising at Indiana University, and Jen Shang, an assistant professor at the School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana Univeristy.

“The real difference” those leaders are able to make, the report says, is a “consequence of the way in which they understood and coped with the complexities of everyday decision making.”

Transformational growth

The report examines five organizations identified by 20 leading directors of fundraising and senior fundraising consultants. Those groups include Cancer Research UK, British Red Cross, NSPCC (National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children), Save The Children, and Royal British Legion.

“Outstanding fundraising enables an organization’s fundraising income to double, triple or even quadruple,” the report says.

Yet growth at the charities studied “was not a goal in and of itself,” it says. “A passion for the work and daring to believe in what might be achieved was considered paramount.”

Equally critical, in creating a “compelling ongoing case for support,” is the need to work closely with the program team “to ensure that any new objectives were meaningful for donors,” the report says.

“Fundraising greatness thus delivers the kind of growth that is transformational for the organization and its programs either in scale or in content so that the organization can multiply its societal impact,” it says.

Exceptional fundraising leaders “manage their teams and achieve desired change through a combination of will and personality,” it says.

And they “devote considerable attention to what they regard as the critical building blocks of success,” it says, “namely, building an exceptional team, structure(s) and culture.”

Team building

Appointing the “right” fundraising team is critical, the report says.

While some leaders hired new team members as soon as they arrived at the organization, others waited until after they had “strengthened the existing team, working on the collective ‘belief’ that it was possible to succeed, by helping them create early successes,” it says.

The resulting “improvement in confidence and morale became self-sustaining as individuals began to recognize their own potential to succeed,” it says. “Technical expertise on the part of team members was important, but so too was conscientiousness, a willingness to support others, and a propensity to engage in appropriate levels of risk-taking.”

Once the “right” team had been built, none of the organizations examined suffered from the high turnover rates “that otherwise pervade our sector,” the report says. “Being a part of a successful team appears to engender high levels of loyalty,” both on the part of the teams and their leaders.

In setting goals, outstanding leaders also “aligned their organizational metrics with the longer term drivers of donor value,” the report says.

Rather than couching them in the “short-term minutiae that typically pervade our sector,” it says, objectives were framed “in the standards and behaviors they identified would add value for supporters and thus pay-back in the longer term.”

Appraisal and reward systems, it says, “were similarly aligned, to focus team member ambitions on the things that mattered most to longer term growth.”

Organizational structure

Organizations that were great at fundraising adopted a structure based on “function,” such as fundraising, finance, marketing, public relations, campaigning and program management, the report says.

“The advantage of such a structure,” it says, “is that it pools specialists together to create economies of scale, minimizes the duplication of personnel/equipment, and employees can speak ‘the same language as their peers.’”

But the disadvantage of that structure is that “functional departments can become competitors who engage in a power struggle for organizational power and resources.”

It was a focus on building “team efficacy,” or developing the “supporting system” that “consistently produced great fundraising,” the report says.

“Since talent can be created through training and development,” it says, “it is more important to have a system in place to grow it than constantly trying to source the right talent externally.”

Culture of learning

Great fundraising organizations “need to instill an organizational learning culture,” the report says, or one that “acknowledges both internal and external environments and develops sensitivity around what might be learned from both.”

Those kinds of organizations are “flexible enough to respond and adapt quickly to factors arising in either environment.”

Instilling an organizational learning culture requires individuals who can “think quickly (and well)” and who know the “limits of their knowledge,” ask for help when they need it, and are “tenacious about guiding and helping colleagues,” the report says.

That last characteristic is “particularly important for the success of an organization’s fundraising practice since it helps inculcate a supportive culture that encourages individual team members to learn form each other and to be genuinely open to challenges derived from the perspectives of others,” it says.

Directors at such organizations encourage “a greater degree of flexibility and risk-taking on the part of their teams, providing the prevailing culture with more of a development focus,” the report says. “Failure was redefined as the failure to learn from experience if something did not work out as anticipated, rather than the failure of a particular strategy or individual.”

High quality thinking

The real difference made by leaders of great fundraising organizations “occurred as a consequence of the way in which they understood and coped with the complexities of everyday decision making,” the report says. “It is the quality of thought that underlies action that gives rise to greatness, not the actions themselves.”

What was distinctive about the leaders interviewed for the report  was “their ability to discern complex systems at play within their organizations and consciously manage those systems to achieve the outstanding fundraising they sought to create,” it says.

And what was unique to those leaders, it says, “was an ability to think and think clearly about themselves, what they could offer the organization and how organizational systems could be managed to create the environment for fundraising to flourish.”

Doing that required those leaders not only to “embed their fundraising in their chosen organization, but rather to embed themselves as a ‘whole’ individual,” the report says.

So they “first needed to understand the benefits that their intellectual, emotional and social system of activity could deliver for their organization,” the report says. “In essence they needed to design the interface between their individual system and the system of their organization, looking for the optimal mix of contributions that could be made to further the purpose of the charity.”

The leaders then needed “to develop a similar approach to the management of their fundraising team, again understanding and designing the interface their team would have with other organizational systems,” such as service provision, marketing and finance, the report says.

“They needed to understand them in a such a way that each of these systems could be perceived as a whole in its own right, but also simultaneously as part of a greater organizational whole,” it says.

Initiating change

The leaders then were able to ask how all those existing systems might be “transformed systematically such that great fundraising may be created,” the report says.

“What makes a fundraising leader truly great,” it says, “is how they think about answering that question.”

That kind of thinking “is at the core of an organization’s purpose,” the report says.

The leaders interviewed for the report “all became change initiators and leaders at an organizational level,” it says. “None of them, in creating great fundraising, felt that they could create it within the current organizational system. Rather, all of them believed they must transform the organization in order to create their outstanding fundraising success.”

– Todd Cohen

SEEDS digs deeper to cultivate being green

May 15, 2013 By in Education, Environment, North Carolina Tags: , , , Leave a comment

By Todd Cohen

DURHAM, N.C. — One morning in April, 10 middle-school students from Triangle Day School spent three hours learning about the environment and working in the garden at SEEDS, an educational community garden in downtown Durham.

Also in April, an educator from SEEDS spent a full day at Central Elementary School in Hillsborough, rotating through the classrooms to teach students about insects, reptiles and other animals that live in gardens and are critical for their ecosystems and for growing food.

And twice a week, roughly half-a-dozen women from Good Samaritan Inn, the shelter for women and children at the Durham Rescue Mission, work as volunteers in SEEDS’ nearly two-acre garden, and in return take the harvest to the shelter’s kitchen to feed their families and peers.

Launched in 1994 by co-founders Brenda Brodie and Annice Kenan, SEEDS initially aimed to create community gardens on unused vacant and blighted properties to address a lack of access to good, healthy, fresh food for low-income residents.

That effort helped spur the creation of 15 community gardens, some of which still are operating.

But SEEDS has shifted its focus to using its own garden and its expertise to “teach people how to garden, grow organically, and learn about principles of sustainable agriculture, organic gardening and environmental stewardship,” says Emily Egge, executive director at SEEDS.

Operating with an annual budget of $414,000 and a full-time staff of six people, SEEDS serves over 1,000 people a year, mainly through partnerships with schools and nonprofits.

It works with at least a dozen schools a year that take field trips to the SEEDS garden or get visits from SEEDS educators.

Its DIG program, or Durham Inner-city Gardeners, for example, provides year-round part-time jobs for five high school students, plus summer jobs for another 10 to 15 students.

And it recently broke ground on a renovation project to expand its building at the corner of Gilbert and Elizabeth streets to 5,000 square feet from 3,200 square feet.

The project will include more classroom space, expanding what had been a small residential kitchen to a teaching kitchen with four to six student stations, and adding a “mud room” to store garden tools and supplies, and to handle activities such as potting, transplanting and painting.

SEEDS temporarily has relocated its offices to rented space across the street in the John O’Daniel Exchange, and expects to move back to its renovated quarters by the end of the year.

To help pay for its expanded services, SEEDS aims over the next three years to increase its annual budget $500,000 by securing more foundation grants and more gifts from individual donors, and through the redesigned website it launched six months ago that has helped generate $8,000 in online giving in the fiscal  year that ends June 30, or roughly four times the total two years ago.

And on May 19, SEEDS will hold its 5th annual Pie Social from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. at The Pavilion at Durham Central Park on Foster Street to raise money for its DIG summer program.

“We want everyone who comes through out gates, whatever their age, background or knowledge,” Egge says, “to leave with something that will impact their life, their views of sustainability, and their capacity to grow and make decisions for themselves about what they’re  eating, where they’re buying it from, and how they’re feeding their families.”

Million-dollar donors live nearby

May 14, 2013 By in Giving, Philanthropy, Research Tags: , , , , Leave a comment

Donors who make gifts of $1 million or more tend to live near the charities they support, a new study says.

Sixty percent of donors who made gifts at that level between 2000 and 2011 lived in the same state or geographic region as the nonprofit or foundation that received the gift, says A Decade of Million-Dollar Gifts, a study from consulting firm CCS and the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy at Indiana University.

Forty-seven percent of gifts at that level and 52 percent of their total dollar amount came from donors living in the same state as the charities they supported, says the study, which analyzed data from the Million Dollar List, the School of Philanthropy’s searchable online database of over 68,000 publicly announced gifts.

“The opportunity to strengthen one’s community can be highly attractive to potential donors,” Robert Kissane, president of CCS, says in a statement. 

“Nonprofit organizations that effectively communicate potential impact and seek out the right local donors may experience transformational gifts,” he says. “Thoughtful cultivation and stewardship of these donors can often lead to life-long philanthropic partners and community-based advocates as well as influence peer giving within the community.”

Donors in the same state accounted for over half the gifts of $1 million or more to health nonprofits; arts, culture and humanities organizations; higher education institutions; foundations; and government agencies.

And donors in the same region accounted for two-thirds of gifts at that level to those types of organizations.

Foundations and higher education institutions each received roughly one-third of the total dollar value of gifts at that level, with the remaining dollars split about evenly among other types of organizations and no subsector getting more than 10 percent of publicly announced gifts of $1 million or more.

“Contrary to conventional wisdom, organizations of any type can attract million-dollar gifts,” Una Osili, director of research at the School of Philanthropy, says in a statement. “Donors at this level are motivated to give to a variety of organizations and causes.”

Individuals and foundations are the main source of publicly announced gifts at that level.

Roughly one-third of those gifts made between 2000 and 2011, representing half the total dollar amount of gifts at that level, came from gifts made by living individuals.

Including bequests, individuals contributed 40 percent of gifts at that level and 65 percent of the total dollar amount.

Foundations made 43 percent of gifts of $1 million or more, account for 25 percent of the total dollar value of those gifts.

– Todd Cohen

Cooperation key in fighting homelessness

May 13, 2013 By in Affordable housing, North Carolina Tags: , , , , Leave a comment

By Todd Cohen

DURHAM, N.C. — Collaboration as a preferred strategy for making an impact on community problems is the focus of growing conversation in the charitable world, although turning that aspiration to cooperate into a working reality can be daunting.

To see a model for how to build a community-wide partnership that is supported by public and private investors and addresses an urgent local need, consider the effort to fight homelessness in Durham.

Housing for New Hope, the lead partner in that effort, was founded in 1992 to prevent and end homelessness in the community.

Public-private partnerships

Starting in 1992, when it received its first federal grant, a core strategy at Housing for New Hope has been to team with public and private partners and funders.

Reinforcing that strategy was $1 million in federal stimulus funding in 2010 that helped inspire the agency to form a partnership with Urban Ministries of Durham, Genesis Home, and the Durham Interfaith Hospitality Network.

That partnership reflected a policy at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development that has encouraged community cooperation to address homelessness.

With that funding, the partnership has served 173 households through its collaborative “rapid rehousing” program that aims to help households free themselves from poverty.

The program provides or connects homeless people to permanent housing, and to support services they can use to find the stability they need to keep that housing.

Local funding

Those federal dollars now are gone, however. So, to generate support to continue and improve the program, the four agencies together approached local foundations and government.

That collective fundraising effort yielded a total of $450,000 in investment from the A.J. Fletcher Foundation and Stewards Fund, both in Raleigh, and from the City of Durham.

With those funds, the collaboration plans to serve at least 80 households over the next year.

Terry Allebaugh, who has served as executive director of Housing for New Hope since it was founded and has spearheaded the collaborative effort to fight homelessness, says private-public investment opens the door to greater flexibility than federal funding allows.

Innovative strategies

The Durham collaboration has sprouted a range of innovative strategies to help homeless people find their way to financial stability.

Each of the 80 households, for example, will get 50 pounds of food to get started, courtesy of the Food Bank of Eastern and Central North Carolina and the InterFaith Food Shuttle, both based in Raleigh.

Each household will receive a houseful of furnishings for only $288, thanks to The Green Chair Project in Raleigh, as well as a housewarming basket stocked with cleaning supplies and other household items by a group of Durham congregations and civic groups.

The households also will receive training and services to prepare them for the world of work and help place them in jobs through Durham Technical Community College and the Office of Economic and Workforce Development for the City of Durham.

That work-readiness and training program will include classes hosted at Urban Ministries for its clients and those of Genesis Home and Durham Interfaith Hospitality Network.

Some families in the rapid rehousing program will be connected for a year to “Circle of Support” teams of five to seven volunteers recruited by Genesis Home who will provide a range of services, from tutoring and mentoring children and connecting families to employment opportunities and recreational activities to simply listening to family members.

And volunteers from congregations and businesses will be working to help move families into their new homes. Those volunteers, in turn, may want to suggest that their own congregations and businesses provide additional teams on an ongoing basis, widening the concentric circles of neighbors helping neighbors.

Local engagement

A big lesson from the Durham strategy to fight homelessness is that solving complex community problems is a job that increasingly will require creative solutions that engage public and private players, including services providers and investors.

With the serious problems our region faces, all of us should in the Triangle should be talking to one another and looking for ways to build those kinds of cooperative strategies, and to make them work.

UNC replacing firm working on search for fundraising chief

May 10, 2013 By in Fundraising, North Carolina Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

By Todd Cohen

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — Plans for a long-delayed comprehensive campaign at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to raise $3 billion have taken yet another turn with the replacement of the search firm hired earlier this year to help find a new vice chancellor for development.

The latest move, which dismissed search firm Witt/Kieffer, was made with the participation of Carol Folt, interim president of Dartmouth, who was selected in April to become UNC’s new chancellor, effective July 1.

“With her input, the [vice chancellor for development search] committee is now moving forward with the search,” Karen Moon, director of UNC News Services, said in an email message to Philanthropy North Carolina.

“We are using a different firm,” she said. “The committee is in the early stages of identifying candidates and is pleased with its progress.”

Witt/Kieffer was hired “to help move the search process to a point where the Chancellor-Elect, once named, could become readily engaged,” Moon said.

She said a new firm had not yet been selected and that Witt/Kieffer had been dismissed because the “search committee, with input from Chancellor-Elect Folt, decided to go in a different direction with the search process.”

Moon said a campaign planning cabinet of volunteers is “actively working” and will “focus on helping the University create a vision for the campaign: its big overarching themes and how to communicate them.”

Schools and units throughout the UNC campus “have begun to identify priorities,” she said. “However, there is no official timeline for the campaign, as the Chancellor-Elect and the new Vice Chancellor for Development will need to be involved in those decisions,” Moon said.

Scott Ragland, director of development communications at UNC, told Philanthropy North Carolina that plans for a capital campaign had been in limbo pending the selection of a new chancellor and a new vice chancellor of development.

“Until those people are in place, we don’t know” details of campaign plans, including a possible schedule for launching the campaign’s quiet and public phases, Ragland said. “We are not going to establish a timetable without their input.”

Thorp announced last September he would step down as chancellor, effective July 1, an announcement he made a week after Matt Kupec quit as the long-time vice chancellor for university advancement.

Both resignations came in the wake of disclosures that Kupec and another fundraiser at UNC with whom he was having a romantic relationship had taken at least 25 personal trips at the University’s expense.

Thorp, who later was selected as provost at Washington University in St. Louis, in January named an 11-member search committee to help identify candidates to be the school’s new vice chancellor for development.

In a message at the time to faculty and staff, Thorp said that, with the search for a new chancellor “well under way, it’s important to initiate the process now to time the vice chancellor search so my successor will have an opportunity to provide input and be involved in the interview process and final selection.”

Thorp said he had made that decision after consulting with his predecessor, James Moeser.

Witt/Kieffer was hired at that time.

Four years ago, UNC was poised to begin a multi-billion-dollar campaign when the capital markets collapsed, prompting the school to put the campaign on hold.

One year ago, Thorp and Kupec reportedly asked the UNC board of trustees to okay the start of the campaign’s silent phase last July, but the board vetoed that request, saying the school was not ready and should devote another year to developing its strategy.

After Kupec’s resignation, Thorp named Julia Sprunt Grumbles, former corporate vice president at Turner Broadcasting, as interim vice chancellor for university advancement.

And Elizabeth Dunn retired in January as senior associate vice chancellor for university advancement.

Nonprofit news roundup, 05.10.13

May 10, 2013 By in North Carolina Leave a comment

Band Together NC raises $853,000 for Tammy Lynn Center

Band Together NC raised an estimated $852,722 for the Tammy Lynn Center for Developmental Disabilities in Raleigh at its May 4 concert event featuring Lyle Lovett.

Band Together, a Triangle-based organization that uses live music as a platform for social change, has raised nearly $3 million for local nonprofits since it was founded in 2001.

Last year, Band Together raised $566,000 for Urban Ministries of Wake County through sponsorships, ticket sales, silent auctions, a wine grab, live artist paintings and a raffle at the concert event.

Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation awards sabbaticals

The Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation in Winston-Salam has awarded sabbaticals to leaders of five nonprofits in the state.

The awards provide each recipient with $25,000 to take an extended break from work to focus on personal needs, self-growth and self-revitalization.

Receiving 2013 sabbatical awards are Jennifer Herman of Boone, executive director of OASIS Inc.; Mavis Hill of Creswell, executive director of Tyrrell County Community Development Corp.; Chris Kromm of Durham, executive director of Institute for Southern Studies; Frankie Roberts of Wilmington, executive director of Leading Into New Communities; and Dawn Rochelle of Jacksonville, executive director of Onslow County Partnership for Children.

Lowe’s, Habitat, Building Together team up

Lowe’s has brought together longtime partners Habitat for Humanity and Rebuilding Together for the first time to revitalize a local community.

Over 120 Lowe’s Heroes employee volunteers this week joined Habitat for Humanity Charlotte and Rebuilding Together of Greater Charlotte to complete building one new home and make improvements to 36 additional homes in the South Smallwood neighborhood of West Charlotte. Improvement projects include kitchen, bath and porch renovations, safety improvements, landscaping, painting and other critical repairs.

As part of the company’s women’s leadership series, female leaders from Lowe’s corporate office and local stores volunteered their time and skills to support the neighborhood rehab efforts.

Lowe’s has partnered with Rebuilding Together since 2007 to renovate and rehabilitate nearly 1,000 homes and affected over 3,000 people.

The partnership also works to revitalize and stabilize vulnerable neighborhoods and communities across the nation.

Triangle JDRF event raises over $800,000

Celebrating its 10th anniversary, the JDRF Hope Gala raised over $800,000 for the Triangle/Eastern North Carolina chapter of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation to benefit type 1 diabetes research, bringing to over $5 million the total raised since the inaugural event.

Co-chaired by Kelly Greenlee and Susan Lundberg, the event honored the work of two diabetes researchers, Christopher Newgard of Duke and Roland Tisch of UNC, and the funds raised will be used to support the research projects of their focus — autoimmunity and regeneration.

Winston-Salem community leaders honored

Karl F. Yena, retired director of worldwide organization development and training at R.J. Reynolds, has received the 2013 Winston-Salem Foundation Award, and four recipients have received the 2013 ECHO Awards, all announced by The Winston-Salem Foundation.

Yena, who retired in 1997 and works annually with over 90 local and regional nonprofits, has designated that the $10,000 Foundation grant he received go to Leadership Winston-Salem, Second Harvest Food Bank of Northwest North Carolina, and the Shepherd’s Center of Greater Winston-Salem.

Recipients of the ECHO Awards, each receiving $1,000 to grant to a nonprofit of their choice, include:

* Aaron Bachelder, who established The Enrichment Center Percussion Ensemble 15 years ago by engaging interested students at Winston-Salem’s Enrichment Center, an arts-based day program for adults with disabilities.

* Marcus Hill and Salem Neff of Chaos Cooking, an experiment in cooking and community-building that began in 2010 and aims to create new social networks as people collaborate and share food.

* The Hispanic League, which was established in 1992 to improve the quality of life for the Hispanic and Latino population.

* Reap More Than You Sow Community Gardening Initiative, which was founded in 2010 and has expanded to 22 community gardens in the greater Winston-Salem area. In 2012, its 154 participating households produced 8,500 pounds of fresh produce to keep and donated nearly 4,000 pounds to local food banks.

The Winston-Salem Foundation Award, established in 1996, is given to individuals who demonstrate the Foundation’s values of generosity, excellence, inclusion, and integrity, along with visionary leadership in a community activity or on behalf of a community organization, particularly in the recent past.

The ECHO Awards, jointly presented by the Foundation and ECHO Network, recognize recipients who are creatively building social capital, connecting people and building trust to make the community stronger.

Triangle YMCA gets grant from YMCA of the USA

YMCA of the Triangle has been selected by YMCA of the USA to participate in an initiative to improve health and eliminate disparities related to chronic diseases in the African American and Hispanic communities.

YMCA of the Triangle will focus on tobacco prevention and lack of physical activity for residents in Southeast Raleigh.

In 2012, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s awarded YMCA of the USA a cooperative agreement of up to $4 million a year for up to five years to improve health and well-being in the U.S., addressing gaps between racial and ethnic groups.

YMCA of the USA is regranting the funds to 16 new communities each year with populations under 500,000 and an established relationship with a geographic area that is at least 50 percent African American or Hispanic or a combination of both ethnic groups.

McNeil to head Community School of the Arts

Devlin McNeil, former chief operating officer at McColl Center for Visual Art in Charlotte, has been named president and executive director at the Community School of the Arts in Charlotte, effective June 17.

Coca-Cola Bottling sponsors Shakespeare To Go

Charlotte-based Coca-Cola Bottling Co. Consolidated will be a sponsor of the new fall tour of the High Point-based North Carolina Shakespeare Festival’s Shakespeare To Go program, which will reach nearly 20,000 North Carolina students.

Shakespeare To Go sends professional actors into schools and communities throughout North Carolina to teach the written, spoken and performed words of Shakespeare. Begun in 1978 as GlobeWorks, the Shakespeare To Go program has performed in all 100 North Carolina counties, reaching about 500,000 students total.

Benevolence Farm receives $5,000

Benevolence Farm in Carrboro received a $5,000 grant from The Hayden-Harman Foundation in Burlington. The grant will provide general operating support to help Benevolence Farm by summer 2014 become a working farm and a place to stay for up to 12 women leaving prison.

Food Bank in Winston-Salem gets $45,000 grant

Second Harvest Food Bank of Northwest North Carolina in Winston-Salem has been selected as one of 40 winning Feeding America food banks to receive a $45,000 grant from Walmart’s “Fighting Hunger Together” initiative. With the grant, the organization will provide additional food assistance to children and families in need this summer, targeting communities that have the highest rate of childhood hunger.

Benefit concert for homeless veterans

Black Women Empowered Safe Haven, a Greensboro nonprofit that provides housing and services for homeless female veterans and their children, will host a benefit concert May 24 at 6 p.m. at the Clarion Hotel in Greensboro. Part of the proceeds from the event will go to The Servant Center, a Greensboro nonprofit that provides housing and services for homeless and disabled male veterans.

Day program opening in High Point for homeless families

Starting May 13, Family Promise of Greater Guilford County will operate a day program in High Point, NC for homeless families with children. Families will have access to shower and laundry facilities, computer and training room, family day room and telephone. Case management will be provided by a full time social worker.

Rex Endowment issues requests for proposals

The John Rex Endowment in Raleigh has issued two requests for proposals, one for funds to be used to increase the number of people and organizations engaged in activities that are effective in preventing injury and ensuring the overall safety of Wake County children and the other for funds to be used to build the strength and sustainability of organizations that support Wake County children in living healthy lives.

Duke University gets $500,000

Duke University received a $500,000 grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to use new technologies to analyze some of the world’s oldest documents and artifacts through a new “Duke Collaboratory for Classics Computing (DC3),” a unit of Duke Libraries that will advance scholarship in both classical studies and the digital humanities.