Salin Bank is proud to announce a $20,000 contribution to the Columbus, Indiana-based Heritage Fund for “A Cause in Common.” The multi-million dollar Commons project will be the flagship of the downtown area and is designed to include retail, dining and conference space. The Salin Bank donation will be paid over a two year period. The first installment was presented this week to the Heritage Fund—the Community Foundation of Bartholomew County.

Northland AEG announced today that the Hartford Wolf Pack Community Foundation is partnering with Trinity College to launch a "Ryan Gordon/Hartford Wolf Pack Community Foundation Learn to Play Hockey Program".

The program will be conducted at Trinity College's Koeppel Community Sports Center and is open to children aged 4-16 who are residents of the City of Hartford.

The stated mission of the Hartford Wolf Pack Community Foundation is to help fund charitable and non-profit endeavors that offer support to inner-city youth, amateur sport, and promote the health, education and well being of Connecticut's children.

Assistance League Chesapeake received a $1,000 grant for its emergency kits program from the Community Foundation of Anne Arundel County.

Bess Langbein, executive director of the foundation, and several members of the grantmaking committee of the foundation's board presented the check and learned more about the program during a kit packing session in March.

The emergency kits program, run by Assistance League in cooperation with Partners In Care Inc., distributes emergency supplies to homebound individuals in the county.

Chamber member The Volunteer Center @ RSVP is offering free assistance to individuals and families applying for Food Stamps and Unemployment Benefits. They have a number of well-trained volunteers who are offering this service at CANI (Community Action of Northeast Indiana), Community Harvest Food Bank and the Volunteer Center office on Lake Ave.

Provided by a grant from the Paul Clark Endowment Fund-Community Foundation of Greater Fort Wayne.

Twelve grants totaling $103,725 have been awarded to local nonprofit agencies and groups for such projects as government reorganization, arts scholarships and the Special Olympics.

The Community Foundation of Muncie and Delaware County recently announced the awards for its third competitive grant cycle of 2009.

Grants are awarded in five areas of interest: arts and culture, human services, economic development, education and community betterment.

Next up for the ART for Life program is a series of mural projects, starting with one at the detention center. "It will be done in phases of six-week increments," Taylor said. "The kids in detention now are doing the background layer and the next group will do the next layer."

The ART for Life project is supported by Brazos County, the cities of College Station and Bryan, the Texas Commission on the Arts, the Brazos Community Foundation and the Barbara Bush Literacy Corps. But, Taylor says, additional community financial support is vital for this and other council projects, especially in the face of the aforementioned funding reductions.

The city has hired a consultant to train local community groups, non-profits and the City Council to help improve leadership and implement some of the ideas generated at the Galesburg Advantage Visioning forums.

Six visioning forums earlier this year were attended by hundreds of local people who came together to discuss ideas to improve Galesburg. The city is now working to take those discussions to the next level by building a structure to develop ideas aired at the meetings.

The visioning process, which began at the Galesburg Advantage forums, has been refined to focus on three areas: Bringing ideas to fruition through partnering local agencies with themes; targeting participation with traditionally under-represented populations; and building capacity in local agencies to support the vision concepts and cultivate leadership.

Later in the fall, Galesburg Advantage will match those themes with local organizations which can begin to tackle them. The two workshops in September will be sponsored by the city in partnership with Galesburg Community Foundation, Carl Sandburg College and University of Illinois Extension.

The visioning sessions finished in April and the city has been working with a number of local groups to see how ideas generated at the forum can be developed.

Wanting to expand your grant raising horizons but run into many potential grant donors that indicate they may give to your nonprofit, only to find in the fine print, later, that they only give to pre-selected organizations (or they do not accept unsolicited grant proposals, or they are not accepting grant applications at this time)? Yes, they may seem implacable but the reality is there is a way to get your organization in front of most any grant donor even if they are not accepting grant applications.

If, as you conduct research into which grant donors would potentially be more likely to give to your nonprofit (this process is called 'prospecting') you run into a few potential donors whose giving guidelines state three important indicators that they are likely to give to your nonprofit: they fund causes such as the one(s) your nonprofit works on, they fund the types of programs or projects that you are writing the grant proposal to fund, and they fund nonprofits serving the geographic region that yours' is going to serve through your proposed project or program.

The Arkansas Community Foundation (ARCF) is happy to partner with DonorsChoose.org to implement the 2009 SIMS (Science Initiative for Middle Schools) program in Arkansas!

Funding for this mini-grant program is made possible by an endowed gift to ARCF from the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation.

Even in the face of the citys deep recession woes caused by the decline of the automotive industry, Detroit's citizens are still passionately committed to giving back to their community.

In just 11 hours, donors raised $3.75 million in support of 75 arts and cultural organizations in southeast Michigan, through the Community Foundation Challenge - Arts & Culture.

The challenge, which was sponsored by the Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan and the Cultural Alliance of Southeastern Michigan, featured matching contributions for all donations up to the $1 million mark, provided by the Community Foundation.