Next month, the J. Marion Sims Foundation will mark its 10th anniversary of making grants to improve the quality of life in Lancaster County, Great Falls and Fort Lawn.

Created in March of 1995 from the November 1994 sale of Elliott White Springs Memorial Hospital to Community Health Systems, Inc., the foundation took 18 months before awarding its first grants. In addition to dealing with a number of other matters connected with beginning a new foundation, the trustees used that time to think through carefully and discuss thoroughly grant making philosophy, policies, procedures, and guidelines before awarding the first grants.

From those discussions emerged a clear preference for programs and projects over capital, operational, and other needs. Among other priorities, the foundation concluded that beneficiaries of grants must be located in Lancaster County, Great Falls or Fort Lawn, that it would favor applicants for programs of community service that provide ongoing support, and that it would seek to make grants that have a significant and lasting impact on the community.

On September 23, 1996 the foundation awarded 14 initial grants totaling $1,391,657. Since making those first grants, it has now awarded 746 grants totaling $27,315,301 to a wide variety of non-profit organizations and public agencies to benefit area residents in a number of different ways.

The foundation maintains three different types of grant programs: a Responsive Grants Program, in which the foundation responds to community needs as set forth in applications, a Teachers Pet Grants Program, in which we award grants of no more than $500 to certified educators in our giving area, and a Special Initiatives Grants Program, in which the foundation addresses a specific issue with a series of targeted grants.

Our first special initiative has been in the area of adult literacy and basic skills and we will be sharing with the public in September results from the first three years of programming funded by these grants. Overall, 75% of our grant dollars have been awarded in Responsive Grants, with 24% awarded in our Adult Literacy and Basic Skills Initiative and 1% in Teachers Pet Grants.

In keeping with its guidelines, the foundation has awarded 60% of its dollars for programmatic purposes, with 23% awarded for capital needs, 15% for operations and 2% for planning and other purposes. More important than these numbers, however, is the fact that through the good and hard work of many organizations the foundation has assisted, a significant number of lives have been changed. The impacts of the work done may not be known for many years, but we do know that, to cite just a few examples, children have learned to swim, houses for low income families have been built, adults have learned to read and compute at higher levels, and citizens have learned to better manage their health care.

The benefits of the hospital sale have not been limited to the foundation's grant making. According to Community Health Systems' information, since the sale of the hospital nearly 12 years ago, the company has invested more than $43 million in new equipment and technology into what is now known as Springs Memorial Hospital, and has expanded its workforce by nearly 70%. Major investments have included improvements or additions in the areas of emergency, cardiac, and intensive care, outpatient surgery, and women's and children's care.

Like many foundations of similar origin the foundation finds itself as a keeper of significant assets concentrating its giving in a relatively small geographic area. This limited geographic boundary, while in one sense restrictive, gives us the opportunity know our community and grantees well and to initiate programs that stretch beyond our grant making.

In the past several years these efforts have included providing capacity building and technical assistance to local non-profit organizations through seminars and workshops, one-on-one consultations with staff and independent third parties, the development of a community-located certificate course in non-profit organization management through Winthrop University, and the development of a library of resource materials on a host of subjects ranging from financial management and fund raising to program development and evaluation. As we conduct our grant making and assistive activities we learn - not only from outside institutions and from our peers, but more importantly from our communities and from our grantees.

It's been said that foundations such as ours don't do anything … they simply enable others to do good - and sometimes great - things. It has been the privilege of the Foundation's board and staff to assist those seeking to do good for the citizens of Lancaster County, Great Falls and Fort Lawn in 10 years of grant making and other services. Because of its perpetual nature, the Foundation is poised to continue its assistance many years into the future. We pledge our best efforts to invest in our communities as wisely as we know how.

Contact: James T. Morton
President
(803) 286-8772