Celebrated Marin photographer Pirkle Jones, a colleague of Ansel Adams and Dorothea Lange whose photographs of the Black Panthers caused a furor when they were exhibited at San Francisco's de Young Museum in 1968, died March 15 at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in San Rafael. He was 95...

In recent years, Mr. Jones was honored with retrospectives at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Berkeley Art Museum and the Marin Community Foundation, among other institutions. In 2003, the city of Mill Valley honored him with its Milley Award for achievement in the arts.

The Community Foundation for Southwest Washington will award over a quarter of a million dollars in grants to nonprofit organizations and schools in Clark, Cowlitz and Skamania counties on Thursday, March, 19, 2009 at the Hilton Vancouver, Washington. Local nonprofit leaders, philanthropists and Community Foundation Board and Grants Committee members will attend the Awards Event that will commence at 9:00 a.m.

Twenty-seven nonprofit programs will receive a total of $243,946 from the Community Giving Fund and the Children’s Trust Fund. In addition, the Community Foundation continues to allocate over $30,000 annually for the Principal’s Checkbook Program.

The National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP) released its most recent report, Criteria for Philanthropy at Its Best: Benchmarks to Assess and Enhance Grantmaker Impact. The paper discusses how philanthropic institutions are timid when providing for the greater good.

These organizations have under minded the beneficial impact that they can achieve by improving the overall condition of many communities in need. The article aims to answer the following questions. ”

1. What differentiates an exemplary foundation from the rest of its peers?
2. What can foundations do to improve its relevance to nonprofits, the economically and socially underserved Americans and society as a whole?”

This article provided a set of guidelines to improve charitable giving and focused on the idea that private institutions should direct more of their attention to the needs of impoverished populations.

A community foundation reinvents an indicators report with a 20-year history to engage an entire region in strategic responses to major issues. In recent years, The Spartanburg County Foundation has extended ownership of the report—and a resulting community-wide strategic plan—through partnership with the local chamber of commerce, United Way, a state university, and local government.

via Community Indicators Report @ The Spartanburg County Foundation « We’re Better Together.

The number of residents lacking the basic needs of food, clothing and shelter has risen to crisis levels in Rochester in the recession, say representatives with area nonprofits.

The Rochester Area Community Foundation hopes to spur more local funding for these emergency services through a $100,000 challenge grant offered through the United Way of Greater Rochester's 2009 campaign.

The foundation will match dollar for dollar every new or increased individual donation earmarked for the United Way's "Supporting People in Crisis" impact area.

As Ozarks high school students prepare to begin college, many will have help from the Community Foundation of the Ozarks' scholarship program.

Earlier this month, CFO awarded $482,056 in individual scholarships, including renewals from nearly 200 scholarship funds. CFO manages more than $12.8 million in assets dedicated to scholarships, according to a news release.

The Douglas County Community Foundation is pleased to announce that they have met their goal of raising $21,361 as part of the Harry Cooper Supply Company Campaign for the Ozarks. This money will matched dollar-for-dollar through the Cooper Campaign.

The Harry Cooper Supply Company Campaign for the Ozarks is a dollar-for-dollar challenge grant in partnership with the Community Foundation of the Ozarks that is part of an overall regional effort to enhance community grantmaking endowments, establish administrative/operations endowments, and promote appropriate and best practices by community foundation board of directors.

The surveys reveal a relatively split foundation community on whether a recession means that foundations should hunker down on existing missions or rethink purpose. A debate in a Council on Foundations newsletter between Karl Stauber of the Danville Regional Foundation and Emmett Carson of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation summarized the merits and liabilities of revising foundation mission during a down period. Stauber argued for continuity and suggested that foundations “must have the courage and will to balance the short-term charity needs with the long-term philanthropic opportunities.” Carson, on the other hand, argued for change, saying, “Each foundation has an obligation to consider whether, and how, to respond to this crisis.”

Both Stauber and Carson lead community foundations whose discretionary grant pools may have more room to consider these questions than at private foundations whose restrictions are tied to their endowments.

The http://www.topfoundationgrants.com/index.php/Foundation-Display/312/0/?foundation=Ventura%20County%20Community%20Foundation’s Women’s Legacy Fund annual grants program is underway. The deadline to submit grant proposals is 5:00 p.m., Friday, May 15, 2009.

The VCCF’s Women’s Legacy Fund is an endowed grantmaking fund to support nonprofit programs focused on the economic, educational, physical, emotional, social, artistic and personal growth of women and girls in Ventura County. Each year, donors to the fund review the needs of the community and vote to select issues of importance to women and girls in the county. Over the past 12 years, the Women's Legacy Fund has awarded 107 grants totaling $775,500 to a variety of programs to improve the lives of women and girls in our community.

What are the most important pieces of Santa Cruz County land to protect from development? The Land Trust of Santa Cruz County will seek to answer that question as it develops a 20-year conservation blueprint, the group announced Wednesday.

The 18-month endeavor is being made possible with a $488,000 grant provided by the San Francisco-based Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. The Community Foundation of Santa Cruz County has chipped in $15,000 for a series of public forms in the fall.