Hannah Edwards with the Community Foundation joined Good Morning Keys on Keys Talk 96.9/102,5FM this morning to talk about the organization.
The Community Foundation serves from Key West to Key Largo.
Edwards said, “We support nonprofits in that area, in this community, who are either based, usually based here, but also that serve people here. And the way we do that is we connect donors and resources with needs in the Keys. So we are connecting donors who would like to support the nonprofits who know the needs of the community. It’s not easy to be a nonprofit provider today, they face a lot of challenges, so part of what we do is try to help them with capacity building, and equip them with skills to do more, because it’s always challenging, and we do a community grant program to all the nonprofits in the Keys, and this year, we gave out for the first time, over a million dollars. So that was really exciting. We were super excited to do that.”
The unsung heroes event occurred on February 6.
Edwards said, “We have been doing this event for many years, and there are so many people in this community that work so hard as volunteers. They give their time, which is a very valuable resource, and they give it generously for the good of the community, and they’re not always celebrated for that. So we created this event to give honor and reward and to celebrate those individuals that work so hard and expect nothing in return. So this year, we had 88 heroes from 95 nonprofits, and it was super exciting. It’s always a great time. You always leave that day just with a great feeling, because many of these people do not expect recognition like this, and it’s just really great to be able to give that to them.”
The community grants program begins accepting applications in September.
Edwards said, “But what a lot of people don’t know in the nonprofit community is that we have smaller regional grants that are available to apply for all year round. So these are specific to Lower Keys, Middle Keys and Upper Keys. We have regional councils in each of those areas that support these grants. There’s a fund for each of these grant programs, and our councils grant out that money to applicants in those regions. So I do like to remind the nonprofits in those areas, if they inquire during the part of the year when our big grant program isn’t open, don’t forget about these smaller grants. There’s less competition, and you can apply all year round. If you have a project that you want funding for, they’re typically $3,000 or under, but it’s a good little boost to help you out in the meantime.”
The Community Foundation also has their legacy society.
Edwards said, “Our legacy society is a group of wonderful people who have chosen to provide for this great community now and forever into the future. So what that means is, it sounds mysterious, but it’s really not that mysterious. All you really need to do is designate the Community Foundation as a beneficiary in either your will, or it can even be simply from a life insurance account or a retirement account, and you don’t have to give it all to the Community Foundation. We don’t expect that. Take care of your family, do everything that you want to do, and then if you would like to leave something to the community, we’re happy to steward that for you. It’s very sad when somebody passes away, but the silver lining when they leave a gift is that in their name, we can continue to provide for the community. So we did just have a wonderful, wonderful, many time honored, unsung hero, Mister Denison Tempel, passed away recently, and he did leave a legacy with the Community Foundation. So we are now designating permanent funds for his areas of interest, which were youth, the arts and historical and cultural projects. So this is going to be wonderful to be able to support those areas in Denison’s name forever, because this will be endowed money. So we’re super excited to be able to start that.”
The foundation is turning 30 this year.
Edwards said, “So for anybody that is interested in what we do and would like to find out more, the annual meeting is going to be on May 6, at the Tennessee Williams theater, and the public is welcome, and we’ll tell you a little bit about what we do, what we’ve done in the past year, what we’ve done throughout the history of the foundation, and it’s a great way to come and just check us out and see what a community foundation is all about. Because not everybody knows that. It’s kind of a vague concept to many people, but really what we do is we help fund all of these great nonprofits in the keys. So we hope people can attend our annual meeting.”
For more information, click here: https://cffk.org/