The average price Indiana farmers received for a bushel of corn reached a high last August of $7.18, nearly twice as much as the prior year. That kind of windfall tends to benefit farm-equipment sales, but it could also lead to more charitable giving.
The Central Indiana Community Foundation and Indianapolis Cultural Trail Inc. have pulled the plug on a controversial sculpture depicting a freed slave.
After the financial crisis of 2008, foundations in Indiana and across the country set up special relief funds for their communities. Ongoing support for the one formed in Indianapolis is just one sign of how the poor economy is still influencing grant-makers’ decisions.
The defamation case filed by former CEO Jeffrey Miller now has 17 defendants, many of whom are accused of posting disparaging comments on websites.
Controversy has swirled around a piece of art commissioned for the Cultural Trail’s $2 million public art program. What ultimately happens to Fred Wilson’s “E Pluribus Unum” sculpture of a freed slave could alienate local African-Americans who oppose it or draw the scorn of national art critics.
Hoosiers have already given thousands of dollars to the Indiana State Fair to help victims of Saturday's stage collapse.
The Chicago-based Joyce Foundation has granted $50,000 to support the Central Indiana Community Foundation’s ongoing outreach efforts surrounding the controversial sculpture.
Legacy Fund President Brad Little is stepping down to take a similar job in Iowa. In three years, the foundation serving Hamilton County has grown from $25 million to $40 million in assets.
Two years after Indianapolis Public Schools closed School 37, a multimillion-dollar redevelopment project is set to breath
new life into a building that served the Martindale-Brightwood community for 81 years.
If the debt refinancing is completed, Junior Achievement would be nothing more than a tenant at the Gene B. Glick Junior Achievement Education
Center.
The turmoil that now engulfs Junior Achievement of Central Indiana likely was spawned by questions that arose in 2008 about
the handling of a scholarship fund worth about $200,000.
The Women’s Fund of Central Indiana recently completed an endowment drive that raised $7 million, making the endowment one
of the largest of its kind in terms of assets.
Former Junior Achievement CEO Jeff Miller says Mayor Greg Ballard was about to hire him as a senior policy adviser, but comments
by Central Indiana Community Foundation President Brian Payne and current CEO Jennifer Burk ruined the offer.
The Central Indiana Community Foundation has stopped payment on a $3 million grant to Junior Achievement because of accounting
questions.
Observers offer various explanations for the lack of mergers, including that staff and budget cuts have left many not-for-profits
without the manpower or time for due diligence.
The fund has helped more than 6,000 households in six counties pay for housing, utilities and food.
The $491 million Central Indiana Community Foundation has switched investment advisers after the market crash of 2008, a year
in which it saw greater losses than many of its peers.
The civic festival Spirit and Place, which runs Nov. 5-16, has been a fixture of the fall season since 1996, but organizers
are still trying to explain to Indianapolis residents what it’s all about.
Some major foundations in central Indiana are narrowing grantmaking criteria so they can funnel their reduced asset streams
toward pressing needs brought on by the recession.
