News Release

Local Conference Helps Non-Profit Organizations Help Their Communities

 

Southaven, May 6, 2003 - SOUTHAVEN, Miss.—The Mississippi Center for Non-Profits conducted a conference May 6 at the DeSoto Civic Center to provide training for non-profit organizations with 10 workshops focusing on everything from cultivating relationships with media personnel to grant writing and building strong boards of directors.
More than 70 people from as far north as Germantown and Arlington, Tenn. down to Jackson, Miss. attended the conference, which was also hosted by the Community Foundation of Northwest Mississippi (CFNM) and underwritten by Maddox Foundation. Other sponsors included The DeSoto Times Today and The North Mississippi

Herald.
“We had some excellent presenters and the people who attended the conference had many of positive comments about the quality of the presenters, saying they learned a lot,” said William Bailey, director of community development for CFNM. “Our keynote speaker, Aubrey Harwell, Jr., was particularly strong. His discussions of community foundations and how they can help communities was energizing.”

Harwell, an attorney with Neal & Harwell, PC of Nashville and immediate past president of the Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee, served as keynote speaker during the conference luncheon. Harwell said the history of community foundations is not quite 100 years old, beginning in 1914 with the establishment of the Cleveland Foundation by Frederick Harris Goff.

The Cleveland Foundation set a template for the founding of other community foundations. It is now the second-largest community foundation in the United States, preceded only by New York Community Trust, which distributed $145 million in grants in their area alone. The establishment of community foundations skyrocketed in the United States and spread to Australia and New Zealand, Asia, South America and in throughout the European continent in the ‘90’s.

“Community foundations don’t compete with other nonprofits, they support non-profits,” Harwell said. “Community foundations link people connected by geography and serve as a platform to build the community. They monitor all community needs. They are one of the most efficient and long-lasting ways to give money and provide grants so the charitable individual could establish lasting endowments to benefit the greater good of mankind.

“A community foundation brings support strength and resources to the community and the non-profit organizations within it. Small non-profits have been called the soul of the philanthropic community. What you’re doing is so crucially important to the public good…and more importantly, the next generation,” Harwell said.

Workshops included Building Community Partnerships, Making Allies in the Media, Non-Profit Accounting for “Dummies,” Fundraising that Works, Building Strong Boards, Staying Legal, Effective PR for Nonprofits, 10 Ways to Raise $10,000, and Basic and Advanced Grant Writing.

Rev. Chester Berryhill, DeSoto Youth Theatre board member and pastor of Rising Sun Baptist Church in Hernando, said the workshops were “tremendously helpful.”

“It had good, pertinent information that you could use and presenters who were professional and could convey the information to us on our level,” Berryhill said. “It was very inspirational. The workshops I attended were excellent.”