More thoughts

Safe to say, my post regarding the first round of Athens Area Community Foundation funding drew some interest. I spoke with Ben from Flagpole about it, and I received a very cordial message from Delene Porter, the foundation's executive director. She and I, hopefully, will be able to get together for a cup of coffee to chat about the foundation and OneAthens as a whole.

In the meantime, a few additional things worth mentioning include ...

- It was noted to me that the foundation is intended to be an entirely separate entity from OneAthens, meaning its central purpose does not parallel the aims of the latter (i.e. combat poverty). Instead, the foundation is set up to work like most foundations and spread its money to various agencies and organizations throughout the community that address a variety of issues. As a result, the funding of the Cedar Shoals choir is legitimate because it's more of an arts and culture expenditure that has, admittedly, some added benefit since it provides a once-in-a-lifetime experience for the participating students.

- Porter was kind enough to forward me some common misconceptions regarding community foundations, and I agree with most of them. I still have philosophical differences regarding the impact of any type of competing fundraising entity on the fundraising market as a whole, despite the explanation given in the forwarded document.

- I'm also still not of the mindset that a community foundation is entirely what Athens-Clarke County needs. Or, I suppose more to the point, that the way this particular one is set up will best serve the community. Again, churches, groups and individual donors work to provide these small gifts to address one-time programming needs (as Missions Committee chair at First Baptist Church of Athens, we also received a request to fund a summer camp scholarship at the YMCA ... as, I'm sure, did every other church in the community). There might be a more effective and efficient way to allocate those resources, and I still tend to lean toward paralleling this project more along the lines of the Challenge Grant program the local government uses as part of the Community Development Block Grant (and, as an aside, restructuring how CDBG is currently allocated ... but, I suppose, that's a whole other post).