GiVE 365 grants $88,000 to 12 nonprofits
Spot new for The Memphis Daily News
Sept. 23, 2013
The Community Foundation of Greater Memphis made it easier for a dozen Memphis nonprofits to continue the good they do in the community when it announced the recipients of this year’s GiVE 365 grantees last week.
As they have for the past three years, members of the GiVE 365 initiative vote on where and how collected funds will be distributed. Member households pledge to donate $365 – or a dollar per day – and then have the opportunity to vote on the applicants. For this fourth year, the total amount to grant was $88,983, which includes matching gifts from Barbara and Pitt Hyde, and Sylvia Goldsmith Marks. Last year’s total was about $55,000.
Total applicants numbered 59 and were reviewed by members before being narrowed down to 17 finalists who formally presented their cases to members in August at the Memphis Bioworks Foundation. There are currently 320 members who ranked their top five contenders.
“Everything went more smoothly than it ever has,” said Ashley Harper, director of grants and initiatives for the Community Foundation. “The reviewers had so many diverse opinions that they were able to share respectfully with each other. … There were people from many different occupations and backgrounds, so it makes for a really rich, grant-making body.”
The winners ranged from large to small, and with a variety of ways to look at this year’s grant theme: Home is Where the Heart Is. The organizations were challenged to present how they would endeavor to make Memphis neighborhoods more vibrant, livable and secure. For longtime institution Southern College of Optometry and its Success in School Vision Initiative, the $10,000 will go to provide comprehensive eye exams to about 180 preschoolers, kindergartners and second- and fifth-graders at Nat Buring Orange Mound Learning Center and the Frayser Achievement Elementary School. Memphis Child Advocacy Center will put its $6,150 toward training 123 adults in South Memphis to prevent and respond to child sexual abuse . . . (read more)