CRAWFORD COUNTY- November 12-18 is National Community Foundation Week, and The Community Foundation for Crawford County wants to use this time to raise awareness of their local impact and the importance of community foundations in general. Community Foundations hold endowment funds that provide a permanent source of income for nonprofit organizations, schools and other good causes. They also hold scholarship funds which seek to alleviate college debt, as well as increase our education attainment level. Finally, they are also a grantmaking public charity dedicated to improving the quality of lives for their community. Here locally, those grants have differed greatly in purpose and include everything from helping North Central State College Foundation with the Crawford Success Center, giving to the American Red Cross to help local families after house fires, and even granting to the Crawford Partnership and Crawford Works to support economic, community and workforce development.

“It is a community foundation’s charge to try to unite people and institutions to more effectively address the community’s most critical and persistent challenges,” said Lisa Workman, Foundation President. “As our mission statement reflects, we strive to support quality and lasting investments both now and for generations to come. The Foundation would especially like to recognize and thank our supporters on Nov. 15th, which is National Philanthropy Day!”

The first community foundation created in Ohio was the Cleveland Foundation in 1914, and now there are more than 750 in the U.S. and at least 1,200 outside of the U.S. Nearly every type of gift, from cash to farm land, can be donated to a community foundation. Community Foundation Week was created in 1989 by former President George H.W. Bush to recognize the important work of community foundations throughout America and their collaborative approach to working with the public, private, and nonprofit sectors to address community problems. As The Community Foundation for Crawford County asserts in their tag line, “Home is Why!”