Area organizations who provide services to children maybe getting a little help in 2018. The Jacksonville Children’s Foundation is an organization that’s looking for new and innovative ideas ways to help build the community for local children. Cindy Moore is the Recording Secretary for the Jacksonville Children’s Foundation and says they’ve give out about $40,000 in grant money to about 10 different organizations.
“One that we were really excited to award a large amount of money to was the Jacksonville Association for Music. The Jacksonville High School band uniforms are very outdated and they are in a huge fundraising project right now to raise money for new uniforms. So we were able to give them about $11,000 to help jump start that and I think it’s been great because they have been able get some other funding since then. So we have had a lot great grants that have been proposed this year, it’s really hard to narrow it down with the limited amount of money that we are able to give this year. I tell you it’s one of the best boards to serve on because we just give out money.” said Moore.
The Jacksonville Children’s Foundation usually is able to award about $30,000-$40,000 in grant money. Moore talks about how this is all possible.
“We do have interest from a trust account, set up by the late Minnie and Oscar Bar. We also have some farm ground and the profits we receive from that every year we combine with the interest, so that’s the amount of the money we can allocate.The past few years it has averaged to about $30,000 – $40,000.” Moore said.
These grants are for non-profits that are looking to start new projects. Not for just paying the everyday bills. Moore says it’s an important for organizations to apply when they aren’t receiving much money.
“It’s very important that entities reach out to us. We don’t advertise a lot because we don’t need to. We recognize that the fact a lot of non for profits need money these days. We are barely getting by with the state and federal funding we receive, and so if you are wanting to do something new and initiative it is hard to come up with that extra money. That’s were we like to fill in the gap for people. We also had those non for profits who just had a hard time and need a little extra money to get through and we provide that as well. We would love to with help with that.” said Moore.
An organization can contact the Jacksonville Children’s Foundation by heading to their website www.jacksonvillechildrensfoundation.org. Grants will be due by October this year and then the distribution will take place in January of 2019.