PRESS RELEASE
For Immediate Release – October 8, 2015
Photo of YPF kids with gifts – add caption
Record-breaking year!
New Canaan Community Foundation has been making our community a better place since 1977 and relies on our community’s help to keep up this good work. To date, the Community Foundation has awarded over $10 million in high-impact grants to area nonprofit organizations and life-changing scholarships for local students. Every dollar contributed to the Foundation goes out in grants because their founders established an endowment that pays all administrative expenses.
In addition to making grants and providing scholarships, the Foundation draws local residents into meaningful experiences as leadership volunteers. This year alone, they are helped in their efforts by 75 fundraising volunteers and 100 grantmaking volunteers.
To paraphrase another tagline, the Community Foundation is as local as local charity gets. Their signature Young Philanthropists program teaches our high school students about nonprofits and the critical need for private charitable support to allow them to fulfill their missions. Kids learn about the challenges of fundraising as they work to collect donations for their efforts. They experience firsthand the difficulty in choosing which organizations to support as they work together in a group and make their own grants in an area of special interest to them. Students learn a lifelong lesson about philanthropy, showing their concern for their fellow citizens in a thoughtful, meaningful way. In a testament to the popularity of this program, the program is filled to capacity with 40 students enrolled this year.
The Foundation’s Touch a Life program helps New Canaan families in need by paying their essential expenses, from utility bills for our elderly residents to instrument rentals for our youngest students. Convening local nonprofit leaders and residents alike, they provide educational opportunities through professional development meetings and special events featuring expert speakers who inspire us.
The theme for their outreach effort this year is to turn words into action - words that describe our community like compassion, sharing, neighbors, and home. As Executive Director Cynthia Gorey likes to say, “community is more than where we live, it’s how we live”. The Community Foundation supports the best of our area, dedicated volunteers helping to provide essential financial support for local organizations that make a difference in so many local lives. Residents are asked to join this cause and to support their efforts with a charitable contribution.