Byerly Foundation Acts As Catalyst with Hartsville Grantmaking

The Byerly Foundation has been making grants in Hartsville since the late 1990s. The Foundation was formed from the proceeds of the sale of The Byerly Hospital to a for-profit hospital company. The Board of the Hospital opted to form a private foundation and use the proceeds from that sale over time to help various projects across the Hartsville area. Today, the Foundation has just over $22 million invested and it distributes grants equal to five percent of the assets on an annual basis.

BYERLY FOUNDATION ANNOUNCES GRANT CYCLE

This week the Foundation announced that it has opened the grant cycle for the 2014/2015 grant making year. Grants will be accepted through July 21 and the Board of The Foundation will be discussing the grants at meetings during the summer and early fall. Here is the announcement of the grantmaking process:

May 28, 2014

FOUNDATION ACCEPTING GRANT CONCEPT LETTERS THROUGH JULY 21

                Hartsville, SC – The Byerly Foundation will be accepting grant-concept letters from now through July 21, 2014 for the 2014/2015 grant year.

The Byerly Foundation’s fundamental mission is to help the Hartsville, South Carolina area become one of the best places in the world in which to live. All of the grants approved by the Board must have a direct impact on the immediate Hartsville, SC, community. The Foundation has focused its grant making on education, economic development and quality of life projects.

Concept Letter

The Foundation’s grant making process generally begins with a concept letter of one to three pages. The Foundation funds grants to non-profit 501(C)-3 organizations, schools, colleges, and government-sponsored community projects. Grant making for private foundations is regulated by the U. S. Tax Code. Persons with questions about eligibility should call the Foundation (383-2400).

Concept letters are requested because the Foundation Board desires to minimize the investment of time and resources for organizations to request grant funding. The Board does not require a fully developed grant request but does need certain specific information. The concept letter must include:

·          

      Name of organization and stated proof of eligibility

·         A description of the project envisioned by the organization

·        The outcome(s) that will result from the implementation of the grant project

·         The amount of funding being requested from the Foundation

·        The total cost of the planned project and the sources of other funding

·         The list of officers and board members of the organization

·         An explanation of how the project will make Hartsville a stronger community

The executive director of The Byerly Foundation, Richard Puffer, is available to help answer questions and provide any other guidance that organizations may need as they think about applying for grants. The Foundation’s email is byerlyfdn@yahoo.com. And the phone number is 843-383-2400.

The concept letters may be sent to The Foundation at P.O. Box 1925, Hartsville, SC 29551 or dropped off at the office at 101 North Second Street. They may also be submitted as attachments to an email message.

                                                                                

Grant making timeline

1.       The announcement of the grant-making cycle will be in late May.

2.       Concept letters will be accepted through July 21.

3.       The Board will begin reading and reviewing grant requests after they are received

4.       When the Board has questions, organizations will be contacted for more information.

5.       The Board will plan on taking action on grants at the August and September meetings.

The Byerly Foundation – A short history

The Byerly Foundation was established in 1995 with the sale of The Byerly Hospital to Hospital Management Associates. The proceeds of that sale were put into a private foundation managed by a volunteer Board of Directors. The Foundation has been making grants for the Hartsville area since 1998. The Foundation has approximately $22 million invested and according to tax law givers away five percent of those assets in grants on an annual basis.

The Foundation is governed by a volunteer board of directors. Johnna Shirley is the the Chair of the Board; Rob Tiede is the treasurer; Brianna Douglas is the secretary.  Other members of the Board include: Jerome Reyes,  Steve Avant, Monty Bell, Harris DeLoach, Nancy McGee, Barry Saunders, Alvin Heatley and Todd Shifflet. Richard Puffer is the executive director of The Foundation.

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For More Information:

Richard A. Puffer

843-383-2400

843-229-1492

 

The Byerly Foundation Soliciting Grant-Concept Letters

The Byerly Foundation is soliciting grant-concept letters from now through September 16.

The Byerly Foundation has a mission that is hyper local. It is the goal of The Foundation to help others in the area make Hartsville one of the best places in the world to live. The Foundation can be a catalyst in this work with strategic grantmaking. The Foundation can also be an assistant in this work with partnership grantmaking. Since it began making grants in 1998, The Foundation has combined grantmaking tactics to help in the continuing construction of the community we call Hartsville, SC.

Following is the news release announcing the grant cycle. This release can also be found on the web site:

July 1, 2013

BYERLY FOUNDATION WILL BE ACCEPTING GRANT CONCEPT LETTERS UNTIL SEPTEMBER 16

                Hartsville, SC – The Byerly Foundation will be accepting grant-concept letters from now through September 16, 2013 for the 2013/2014 grant year.

 The fundamental mission of The Byerly Foundation is to help the Hartsville, South Carolina area become one of the best places in the world in which to live. All of the grants approved by the Board must have a direct impact on the immediate Hartsville, SC, community. The Foundation has focused its grant making on education, economic development and quality of life projects.

Grant making process begins with Concept Letter

The Foundation’s grant making process generally begins with a concept letter of one to three pages. The Foundation funds grants to non-profit 501(C)-3 organizations, schools, colleges, and government-sponsored community projects. Grant making for private foundations is regulated by the U. S. Tax Code. Persons with questions about eligibility should call the Foundation (383-2400).

Concept letters are requested because the Foundation Board desires to minimize the investment of time and resources for organizations to request grant funding. The Board does not require a fully developed grant request but does need certain specific information. The concept letter must include:

·         Name of organization and stated proof of eligibility

·         A description of the project envisioned by the organization

·        The outcome(s) that will result from the implementation of the grant project

·         The amount of funding being requested from the Foundation

·        The total cost of the planned project and the sources of other funding

·         The list of officers and board members of the organization

·         An explanation of how the project will make Hartsville a stronger community

The executive director of The Byerly Foundation, Richard Puffer, is available to help answer questions and provide any other guidance that organizations may need as they think about applying for grants. The Foundation’s  email is byerlyfdn@yahoo.com.

The concept letters may be sent to The Foundation at P.O. Box 1925, Hartsville, SC 29551 or dropped off at the office at 101 North Second Street. They may also be submitted as attachments to an email message.                                                                            

Grant making timeline

1.       The announcement of the grant-making cycle will be in July.

2.       Concept letters will be accepted through September 16.

3.       The Board will begin reviewing grant requests in October.

4.       Organizations being considered for funding will be notified in November.

5.       Often, organizations in consideration are asked for additional information.

6.       Final grant decisions are generally made prior to December 31.

The Byerly Foundation Makes Grants for Hartsville-area projects

The Byerly Foundation was established in 1995 with the sale of The Byerly Hospital to Hospital Management Associates. The proceeds of that sale were put into a private foundation managed by a volunteer Board of Directors. The Foundation has been making grants for the Hartsville area since 1998. Richard Puffer is the executive director of The Foundation and the Chairman of the Board of Directors is Charles J. Hupfer. Other members of the Board include: David Blackmon,  Jerry Cheatham, Rob Tiede, Steve Avant, Monty Bell, Brianna Douglas, Johnna Shirley, Barry Saunders, Alvin Heatley and Todd Shifflet.

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How do you know a program is working

The Byerly Foundation is in the community building business and we do this by providing grants for programs that the Byerly Board hopes will make a significant difference in helping Hartsville become an even better place to live and one of the best places to live -- anywhere. That is a stretch goal, by almost any defihttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifnition.

One of the major problems the Foundation has and nearly all Foundations and community development types of programs is how to know if programs work. Normally the groups implementing the programs will set their goals and list the measures they want to use to measure effectiveness. Then you assess the program based on the approved metrics. Sometimes this gets you the information you want and sometimes it doesn't.
More-Than-Good-Intentions
One thing that those working with Foundations and other funders do is continue to explore ways to measure effectiveness. This week the Stanford Innovation Review has a review of a book that discusses how programs might be measured. Just a few minutes ago I ordered this book from Burry Bookstore -- More Than Good Intentions: How a New Economics Is Helping to Solve Global Poverty by Dean Karlan & Jacob Appel

According to the reviewer, Kevin Starr, "Karlan and Appel believe that understanding what works for poverty alleviation programs boils down to one deceptively simple question: “How did people’s lives change with the program, compared with how they would have changed without it?” The primary—but not only—tool that Karlan et al. use to answer that question is the randomized controlled trial (RCT). In an RCT, a pool of subjects is randomly divided into intervention and control groups; the former gets the interventions and the latter does not. The two groups are fundamentally alike—both are measured before and after, and the impact is the difference between what happened to the intervention group and to the control group. RCTs are not new. The novel element here is the systematic and creative application of RCTs to test poverty solutions in the real world."

This is an interesting concept because when you are working on social interventions, it is difficult to keep something that is working away from control groups and often times you have try designing your research project to somehow give those randomized out a chance for being in. While I have not discussed this fully with Dr. Eve Puffer I believe this is a tactic she has used in a major innovation project fighting the spread of HIV/AIDS in Muhuru Bay, Kenya. The Byerly Foundation is currently funding a major project with the Hartsville Middle School called Foxy Leaders that aims to take students at real risk of not finishing school and giving them an even stronger foundation than they might get in regular classes. I am not sure how this could be an RCT. That is why it is going to be interesting to get that book and discover what they authors have found in their research.

Talking Together

Earlier this afternoon I had a phone conversation with a man named Scott London who is doing some consulting work with The Harwood Foundation that is involved with helping determine the elements involved in the dynamics of positive change in communities.

We were in a meeting in Alexandria, VA, that he was helping to facilitate that was discussing how people involved in community change go about this work. One of the things that he and I spoke of previously were the community conversations that were hosted by The Byerly Foundation in Hartsville over the period of about 13 months. In a very real way, these conversations led to the initiative that we are now calling Selling Hartsville that has resulted in the umbrella brand slogan of "Hartsville - The Art of Good Living." We covered a variety of issues in our phone conversation but he mentioned a couple of key points that continue to roll around in my thinking. How do you go from engagement to action? That is a key question and one we continue to wrestle with as we actively move to "launch" the Selling Hartsville campaign. One thing I hope I shared with him is that one key ingredient for moving from engagement to action is getting someone to commit to action. There are a good many people involved in the Selling Hartsville project and Johnna Shirley, whose full time position is with Mutual Savings and Loan of Hartsville, is chair of the marketing task force. Johnna is one of those who understands the importance of taking action and knows how to implement. Coincidentally, she came by the office just about as the phone call with Scott London was ending. We discussed some of the many things that need to be planned for the launch of Selling Hartsville. We also commiserated over the idea of how we continue to move from engagement to action. It takes a lot of people performing a lot of different roles who focus on a goal to make things happen.

And, that gets us into another major topic Scott and I discussed -- the question of where the focus needs to be -- one the process or on the outcome. He is doing a good deal of research on that question. But, as we discussed process, we got into how decisions might be made. The process of Selling Hartsville is currently what I would call a consensus process. We have three task forces that are working as part of the larger Selling Hartsville Task Force. All participants in the three task forces can also be on the major task force -- many are. Those involved are the ones working to make the right decisions.

As noted earlier, before all of this started, we began with community conversation dialogues. Scott mentioned he has a recent blog about dialogues and I am including one short paragraph of a very enlightening discussion of the role of dialogue.

"The process of dialogue is more important than ever today for a number of reasons. For one thing, the confrontation between different cultural traditions and worldviews requires some process by which people can communicate across differences. For another, the fragmentation of society into a myriad of subcultures based on profession, status, race, ethnicity, political loyalty, etc., make it necessary that people find a pathway to common ground. A third reason is that traditional authority structures are falling away."

This seemed a particularly appropriate topic for this blog because dialogue is one of the things that is helping us move forward in Hartsville and, in truth, the lack of dialogue is one of those things that is slowing the momentum. Hmmm