Community Foundation of Greater Greensboro
For more than a decade, the Kellin Foundation has helped provide behavioral health services to the Greensboro community, and now thanks to a grant from the Community Foundation of Greater Greensboro, it will be able to expand even more.
The Community Foundation of Greater Greensboro (“Community Foundation”) announces $1.5 million in nonprofit grants to support the Foundation’s focus on eldercare, health and wellness, economic mobility, and cultural vibrancy in the Triad. $1.1 million of these funds will support capital improvements for equipment, facilities, and housing for older adults through the Charles L. “Buddy” Weill Fund (“Weill Fund”), a permanent endowment of the Community Foundation.
70 years ago, parents of children with intellectual and developmental disabilities wanted to find a way to change the public’s perception of their kids.
Motivating, equipping, and empowering people to find a better life. That is the mission of a nonprofit called StepUp Greensboro. With the help of the Community Foundation of Greater Greensboro, the agency is helping people make positive changes in their lives.
They serve just like men in every branch of the U.S. military. They face the same battles and the same challenges. But when it’s time to come home, female veterans often find they face a different set of obstacles as a civilian, and they’re hurdles traditional veterans’ groups aren’t always equipped to deal with.
Americans around the country will pause to celebrate Independence Day.
They’ll attend community events, host backyard barbecues with friends, and watch brightly-colored fireworks explode in the evening sky. Our ancestors came from different cultures, different countries and different backgrounds. While we collectively celebrate being Americans, we still try to preserve our cultural heritage, and one group in the Piedmont is working to do that in several ways.
The coconut dance is a folk dance often performed during Cambodian wedding ceremonies. On this day, it’s in celebration of the Lunar New Year with children from the Cambodian Cultural Center located in Greensboro.
“It was founded in 2012 in order to help preserve [Cambodian] cultural heritage,” says Treasurer An Strickland. “We offer programs such as arts and also community efforts and leadership and mentorship programs with our youth.” Strickland says it’s important to teach young Cambodian Americans the traditional arts, language and history of Cambodia.
In return, they help older Cambodian immigrants and refugees. “The programs that we offer are the traditional arts as far as dance culture,” she says. “We also do Cambodian literacy programs as well and a lot of community efforts to help our elderly and non-English speaking residents.”
Nearly 300,000 Cambodians escaped conflict and genocide in their homeland in the 1970s and sought refuge in the United States.
Many settled in Greensboro in 1982, and in 1986, they purchased land for Wat Greensboro, a Buddhist Center on Liberty Road in Greensboro.
The Cambodian Cultural Center has offices nearby. It relies on volunteers, but the Community Foundation of Greater Greensboro helps through community grant programs.
“The community foundation has helped enhance our program itself as far as our cultural dance programs as well as showcasing our culture itself. We’ve offered cooking classes. They’ve been able to assist us with that, and we’re going to be starting a traditional classical music class as well,” says Strickland.
In addition, CCC offers community assistance with vegetable giveaways and vaccine clinics. If you want to learn more or if you would like to volunteer your time, visit https://www.cccofnc.org/
Health care isn’t cheap; sometimes even if you have medical insurance; but one agency in the Piedmont is making care available regardless of insurance coverage or financial status.
Triad Adult and Pediatric Medicine provides medical services at six locations in Guilford County thanks in part to help from a community foundation.
Chief Financial Officer Danielle Cole says, “we are a federally qualified health center. We do preventative medicine, wellness checks, immunizations, acute care.”
That may sound like every medical office, but Cole says what makes her organization unique is it cares for all patients, even the uninsured and those who cannot afford to pay out of pocket. The money comes from the Tri-County Health Fund administered through the Community Foundation of Greater Greensboro.
“We consider ourselves to be a safety net provider,” says Cole. “So a lot of times if a person is uninsured or they don’t have insurance or the thought is ‘I have a limited amount of income and that needs to go towards gas or food.’ I’m not going to go and get care until it’s a really bad situation, and a lot of times I’m going to end up in the emergency room. Now I have more debt. I have a huge bill, and now I’ve bogged down that system with something that I could have gone to the doctor for and probably been treated and not had to create that effect.”
The Community Foundation of Greater Greensboro has been named a Family Forward NC Certified Employer by the North Carolina Early Childhood Foundation’s (NCEC) Family Forward NC initiative. A Family Forward NC Employer Certification designates employers that offer policies and practices that support the health and well-being of working families and children.
To achieve certification, NCEC looks at employer benefits in the following policy and practice categories:
“I am proud that my employer, the Community Foundation of Greater Greensboro, has been designated as a Family Forward Certified Employer because we are a family-friendly workplace,” says Martin Acevedo, Vice President of Marketing and Communications at the Community Foundation of Greater Greensboro. “I moved to Greensboro for a job, but I stayed for the quality of life that Greensboro and this job affords me.”
The U.S. is facing a massive talent shortage that will result in a deficit of millions of workers by 2030, and a childcare crisis coupled with lack of supports like paid leave mean pregnant workers and working parents and caregivers—especially women—are disproportionately forced to change jobs or leave the workforce entirely or are unable to rejoin the workforce after giving birth.
“Employers want to attract and retain the best employees, and they want those employees to be happy and healthy,” said Muffy Grant, executive director of the North Carolina Early Childhood Foundation. The Community Foundation of Greater Greensboro offers the following family-friendly benefits to employees and their families:
Decades of research have established that children need supportive and supported families and communities to build strong brains, along with health and development on track from birth and high-quality birth-through-age eight learning environments with regular attendance.
“For children, our future workforce, there is a critical window of time for brain development during the earliest years of life. In fact, the first 2,000 days of a child’s life are so defining that by the time that child turns eight, his or her third grade reading outcomes can predict future academic achievement and career success,” Grant said.
Launched in 2018, Family Forward NC is an innovative initiative to improve children’s health and well-being and keep North Carolina’s businesses competitive. It is employer-led change to increase access to research-based, family-friendly practices — big and small — that improve workplace productivity, recruitment, and retention; grow a strong economy; and support children’s healthy development. To date, Family Forward NC has engaged with more than 6,900 employers across North Carolina.
For more information about our employee benefits and culture, visit cfgg.org. For more information about Family Forward NC and the Family Forward NC Employer Certification, visit www.familyforwardnc.com.
The Community Foundation of Greater Greensboro has announced a seasonal grants program to support nonprofit organizations that help feed the community on Thanksgiving. These grants will provide essential support to groups that are hosting free community meals open to the public, distributing food for individuals and families to prepare at home, or delivering meals to those who are homebound on Thanksgiving day.
The Thanksgiving Fund is accepting applications now through the Community Foundation’s Online Grant Portal, and the deadline is Tuesday, October 31st at 11:59 pm. The funds may be used for food, supplies, and other costs associated with Thanksgiving initiatives.
To be eligible for these grants, organizations must have 501(c)3 status, be located in Guilford County, and provide services in Guilford County. Priority will be given to projects that provide food or meals to those experiencing homelessness, people whose incomes are below the federal poverty threshold, and older adults in Greensboro. For a complete list of eligibility requirements, please visit cfgg.org.
The Community Foundation’s Thanksgiving Fund was created in 2011 with the purpose of serving meals on Thanksgiving Day to community members. To date, $150,000 has been contributed to the fund to support this important initiative with thousands of meals provided throughout the region.
To apply for the Thanksgiving Fund Grant, visit Thanksgiving Fund Grant Application
There was a study done decades ago that discovered that children who thrived after traumatic events had one thing in common: An adult who was a constant positive presence in their lives. Upon hearing this, one of our more prominent nonprofit leaders remarked,” Where is my adult? I need that too!” We all need that “Adult” in our lives we can turn to for guidance and support. One of the tenets of the Guilford Nonprofit Consortium is that good training for nonprofits must be supported by opportunities for individual coaching and mentoring. While the Consortium offers forty different “classroom style” training events each year, much of the benefit of that training are the hundreds of hours of mentoring, coaching, and support that is built into every event.
The Executive Leadership Academy is a year-long leadership development program that allows participants to attend training at the Center for Creative Leadership. After a battery of online assessments, participants meet for day-long seminars on developing their own leadership skills. Supporting the training is a program that gives each nonprofit leader an individual coach to work with during the training to implement what they’ve learned. Participants are also placed in small “Peer Coaching” groups where they learn how to coach and support each other in their development. Many of these Peer Groups continue to meet years after the Academy is over.
In 2020, Triad Coaching Connection, an organization of local professionals in leadership and organizational development, partnered with the Consortium to provide 24 nonprofits with individualized coaching to help them navigate the early days of the pandemic and economic crisis. These professionals volunteered their skills and support to help local nonprofits keep the doors open in those early dark days.
One of the most valued Consortium programs is our Executive Director Roundtable Series. This is a “closed door” meeting for the Executive Directors of nonprofits where they can safely and confidentially discuss the challenges they face in their day-to-day work. Topics may include human resources issues, relationships between Directors and their Boards, financial management, and fundraising. There may be no topic at all! During the pandemic, many roundtables were just opportunities to check in with each other and offer mutual support.
The staff of the Consortium spend much of their time mentoring and supporting nonprofit professionals. The Consortium Director met with 289 individuals from 136 different organizations in 2021. They may have heard from Board Chairs asking, “How can I get this Board member to participate in meetings?” From Executive Directors they heard, “How do I lead my organization through Strategic planning?” The young nonprofit professional asked, “Can you help me develop the skills I need to build my career?” The most common request for help came from the committed community member who asked, “How do I start a nonprofit? Should I?”
There is the old adage “Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.” This is the heart of the work of the Guilford Nonprofit Consortium. We do indeed train people, but more importantly, we help build the relationships that make training work. We help find that “Adult” that our nonprofits need to thrive.
Could you be an “Adult” for one of our local nonprofits? Organizations that rescue animals, mentor youth, develop our economy, provide the Arts, feed the hungry, ensure affordable, safe housing, and many other causes need your support. One of the best ways to share your talents is by serving on a nonprofit board. The Consortium can help you find that nonprofit that needs your help and shares your values. We will even offer you training on how to be an effective board member.
January is National Mentoring Month. We usually associate mentoring with providing young people with personal, academic, or professional support. This is important, but our nonprofit community needs those same supports. Consider being an “Adult” for a nonprofit by offering your skills in accounting, human resources, events planning, fundraising, or any of the myriad of ways that you can help. The Consortium can help you find that “right fit.” Contact us at guilfordnonprofits@gmail.com and start building those relationships.
Steve Hayes, Director Guilford Nonprofit Consortium
