Hawaii People's Fund & Hawaii Community Foundation are hosting a public exhibition of community organizations that you should know.

With donations, Hawaii People's Fund supports community-based groups working for social change throughout the island. Since 2007, Hawaii Community Foundation has matched many of their grant awards.

Meet over 30 groups funded in 2008 for their work for progressive social change in many intersecting arenas.

An advisory committee board made up of representatives from various Bristol Bay communities spent three days in Anchorage last month to decide who would be the recipients of the first round of Pebble Fund grants.

Alaska Community Foundation, which administers the grants funded by the Pebble Partnership, announced April 1 that 33 nonprofit groups, schools, villages and tribal councils serving the Bristol Bay area were awarded $1 million in grants from the Pebble Fund.

The Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan awarded more than $650,000 in grants to local nonprofits in its March grant cycle.

“Uneven Capacity and Delivery of Human Services in the Chicago Suburbs: The Role of Townships and Municipalities” examines the financial,political, and administrative capacity of townships and municipalities to provide human services and begins to answer two primary questions:

• What is the current role of suburban townships and municipalities in delivering social services?
• What is their capacity to enhance their role in the future?

The report was written by Rebecca Hendrick, Ph.D., and Karen Mossberger, Ph.D., both faculty members at The University of Illinois at Chicago, and was funded by The Chicago Community Trust.

“Even before the economic crisis, poverty levels were rising in many Chicago-area suburbs. We need to be asking whether the hundreds of municipalities and townships across the region are positioned to effectively address needs”, said Jim Lewis, Ph.D., senior program officer for basic human needs at The Chicago Community Trust.

Meanwhile, our Library, like libraries across the country, have become a first line of defense for joblessness. Our computers and printers are used for resume preparation. Our newspapers are available for checking the want ads (also checkable on computers). Our collections provides many opportunities for self help. And the Library, during open hours, is a place of refuge for those with no available home or workplace--although we do have a policy against using the Library as a bedroom, developed a few years ago when a homeless person regularly slept through the day at the Library.

We are actively seeking funds from individuals, foundations, and other sources for both capital (repairs and improvements on the Manse) and the building expansion, funds which may be more difficult to obtain during hard times. As always, we invite you to contribute to our Building Fund at the Community Foundation of Dutchess County.

The third Environmental Congress is helping chart a regional environmental agenda. Over one-hundred organizations gathered at the Buffalo Museum of Science to collaborate and form a strategy as part of the Western New York Environmental Alliance, an initiative of the Community Foundation for Greater Buffalo. “Having a healthy environment will make our region more valuable,” said Cara Matteliano, the foundation’s vice president for program, citing the region’s assets of wind and water energy.

In a time of shrinking resources and rising needs, members of the township's various service organizations and community groups have met to see where they can help each other further their goals and, hopefully, do more for the community they serve and live in.

Members of several community groups met Wednesday night at the Redford Jaycees Hall to introduce themselves and talk about what they do in the first Redford Township Community Leaders' Forum, a meeting called and led by Township Supervisor Tracey Schultz Kobylarz.

Jim Bailey, representing the Greater Redford Community Foundation, said a lot of the groups' funding problems could be solved if they would just start pooling their needs, not just their resources. He put forward the hypothetical situation of a church hiring a tree service to remove three trees partnering with other churches who need the same thing and pursuing the tree service as one job rather than three. The important thing, he said, is that the groups work together in order to save the boat they're all in.

“Once a community starts to slide, it's hard to bring people back,” Bailey said.

Despite the growing number of homeless individuals needing shelter, some Valley agencies have empty beds.

But it's not because those agencies have served everyone needing help.

Budget cuts, layoffs and hiring freezes, in response to less government funding and donation dollars, means fewer staff to provide services at a time when the need is even greater.

A new fundraising campaign is aimed in part at helping the agencies that help ease homelessness in the state. It is called the Changing Face of Poverty. Ten charitable groups in the state have pledged $1.3 million with the goal of raising the same amount in donations. The money will be used for food services, housing, health care and such emergency needs as help paying mortgages, rent or utilities.

Who makes this possible? A collaboration of the Arizona Grantmakers Forum, the contributing partners include Arizona Community Foundation, Arizona Republic Charities, BHHS Legacy Foundation, the Bidstrup Foundation, JP Morgan Chase, Lodestar Foundation, Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust, Virginia G. Piper Charitable Trust, Valley of the Sun United Way and Wells Fargo.

A Maricopa Association of Governments survey counted 2,918 homeless people throughout the county this year, a 20 percent increase from the 2,426 counted in 2008.

The Foundation Center reports that nationwide grantmaking by communities foundations is up 6.7% even in these tough economic times. At Coastal Community Foundation of South Carolina, we are up 13% over last year. While all foundations; private, corporate, and community have experienced losses in market value, community foundations alone are showing a burst of grantmaking activity.

The New York Times provides more detail, showing that for all grantmaking foundations total assets have declined and therefore future distributions are likely to drop for many foundations. However, giving through community foundations remains strong. Why the difference? Of the three types of foundations only community foundations are community-based. Private family foundations are created by wealthy families and are not open to future expansion by the general public. If the family or its profit-making holdings do well then new funds are added. Of course this is not likely during a recession. Likewise, giving by corporate foundations tends to increase when profits from the founding company increase and new funds are added from corporate profits. So for both private and corporate foundations increases in money passing through the foundation and out into the larger community are unlikely in these difficult times.

The difference is that community foundations are public charities and the community continues to add funds to community foundations even during a recession.