“We will always help you donate to causes that move you. We have a whole array of tools to help.”
— Dave Bowman, Executive Director
One of Our Donors Wished to Support Earth Day 2017
The Foundation typically receives contributions in the form of cash and checks. Occasionally a donor may present the Foundation with a gift of stocks, which the Foundation then sells and so converts the gift to cash.
But in honor of Earth Day 2017, Foundation donor Lisa Weeks went the extra mile to support recycling efforts across the world. She donated a water cooler to the Foundation’s office. That contribution helps keep the several dozen plastic water bottles formerly used by groups meeting at the Foundation each month from winding up in our local landfill. In the U.S., only one in five water bottles are recycled; the other four take up to 1,000 years to degrade in a landfill. Now the Foundation puts one donor’s passion for saving the Earth into action.
Lisa Weeks’s passion is conservation of the environment; she realized she could make a difference by donating a means to reduce plastic water bottle waste. Her passion and commitment supports the Foundation in saving money formerly spent on plastic packaging and in modeling environmental consciousness to all community groups using the meeting facilities in the Courthouse Annex.
“Give all you can, whatever you can.”
“The most important thing there is is your family,” says Helen McCollum, who established the Helen and Howard McCollum Family Scholarship Fund at the Foundation in 2015. The scholarship honors her family, including two sons who are active in their own communities and the memory of her late husband, Howard McCollum.
Mrs. McCollum grew up in Blackford County and later lived in Muncie, where her husband worked in the building trades. The McCollums moved back to Blackford County when Mr. McCollum took a local building job. Mr. McCollum was also the Blackford County sheriff in the 1970’s.
The fund provides a scholarship for a student already enrolled in an accredited two-or four-year degree program at a university, college, or vocational school. Mrs. McCollum hopes that the fund will help the students receiving the scholarship to complete their education and then do something worthwhile themselves.
