Page 27 – Arkansas Community Foundation

Heber Springs, Ark. (Oct. 6, 2020) – Susan R. Vowels of Heber Springs has been named executive director of Cleburne County Community Foundation, an affiliate of Arkansas Community Foundation. Founded in 2004, Cleburne County Community Foundation makes grants to improve the quality of life in Cleburne County and partners with individuals, families and companies to build its community through philanthropy.

“A 10-year resident of Heber Springs, Susan’s experience in education and marketing will be of great value to the Foundation,” said Heather Larkin, President and CEO of Arkansas Community Foundation. “The Cleburne County affiliate office has a long history of strong leadership and I’m thrilled to continue that tradition. Susan is a wonderful asset for the affiliate office and the community.”

A native of Kennett, Missouri, Vowels received a Bachelor of Science in Elementary Education from Southeast Missouri State University in Cape Girardeau and a Bachelor of Science in Marketing Management from Arkansas State University in Jonesboro. Among other jobs in Mountain Home and in Missouri, she previously was a music educator in the Mount Vernon-Enola School District and the Heber Springs School District.

The mission of the Cleburne County Community Foundation is to engage people, connect resources and inspire solutions that build community so that Cleburne County will remain the kind of place that residents want to raise their children. To learn more about the funds, endowments and activities happening with the Cleburne County Community Foundation office, visit https://www.arcf.org/affiliates/cleburne-county/ or call 501-691-1906.

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Arkansas Community Foundation offers tools to help Arkansans protect, grow and direct their charitable dollars as they learn more about community needs. By making grants and sharing knowledge, the Community Foundation supports charitable programs that work for Arkansas and partners to create new initiatives that address the gaps. Since 1976, the Community Foundation has provided more than $314 million in grants and partnered with thousands of Arkansans to help them improve our neighborhoods, our towns and our entire state. Contributions to the Community Foundation, its funds and any of its 29 affiliates are fully tax deductible.

By Paul Wellenberger

Paul Wellenberger is the former mayor of Fairfield Bay. The Fairfield Bay community was awarded the first Arkansas Rural Connect (ARC) broadband grant.

Fairfield Bay is a resort community on Greers Ferry Lake where people often relocate (you won’t find many third generation residents in our city.) It became obvious to our Imagine Fairfield Bay 2035 team that potential residents now consider great broadband a given just like electricity and water. Without it, folks seeking to relocate here expect it.

With the help of a small grant ($10,000) from the Fairfield Bay Community Fund with other contributors, a study was conducted to assess what it would take to get all of Fairfield Bay to 25/3. (The official FCC broadband definition is a minimum of 25 Mbps download and 3 Mbps upload.) Armed with this critical information, we met with the three internet providers to see what could be done. There was still a major area that was very underserved.

We teamed up with Arkansas Telephone Company from Clinton to submit an Arkansas Rural Connect (ARC) grant request and won. The $1,568,750 grant that was recently awarded addresses our least served areas. The project runs 27 miles providing fiber to the home to over 750 structures and is projected to be completed by the end of 2020.

“This is the first of many projects to be awarded to rural Arkansas communities,” Secretary of Commerce Mike Preston said in a statement. “The ARC grant program is important for the long-term success of our state’s economy.”

Broadband funding was provided through the federal CARES Act, and the state CARES Act Steering Committee and Arkansas General Assembly have approved $19.3 million for ARC grants to be spent by Dec. 30, 2020. An additional $4.7 million in funding is available for projects that extend past that deadline.

This small Fairfield Bay Foundation study grant was the impetus that got the ball rolling. The importance of the Fairfield Bay Community Fund cannot be overstated. Without it, many projects that improve the quality of life in our community could not be done. We deeply appreciate the assistance we received from the Arkansas Community Foundation. They helped us establish the fund and assisted us with the administration and legal compliances required to be successful.

To learn more about the Fairfield Bay Community Fund, visit https://www.arcf.org/our-impact/community-funds/fairfield-bay-community-fund/

Curt Stamp is Vice President of the Arkansas market for Cox Communications. Cox is the largest private telecom company in America, serving six million homes and businesses across 18 states.

The COVID-19 pandemic has illuminated many important needs – some new, some ongoing – for Arkansans to remain safe, productive and engaged while learning and working from home. Our efforts to physically distance and slow the virus’ spread created both challenges and opportunities for families, students, consumers and businesses, including broadband providers such as Cox, the state’s largest cable broadband provider.

One of Arkansans’ critical needs is internet: access to fast and reliable broadband has become not just a luxury but rather an essential service. Especially now, a home broadband connection is more than just entertainment. It allows Arkansans to learn, receive healthcare, connect with loved ones, conduct domestic and international business, and much more. Now, collectively, we must address the three critical barriers to connectivity: availability, adoption and devices.

Availability is a major concern due to the rural nature of the state. According to a recent study from Boston Consulting Group and Common Sense, 46% of Arkansas students are without an adequate high-speed internet connection, which is defined by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) as a minimum speed of 25 Mbps download/3Mbps upload. Building robust, state-of-the art networks to provide internet availability is capital intensive. The private sector, including Cox, has invested billions of dollars throughout the nation to bring broadband to Americans. Unfortunately, many of the areas which lack service today would be uneconomical to serve without some level of government support.

Broadband adoption is another piece of the puzzle, particularly for low-income households. According to the Brookings Institute, while 73% of Arkansas families with access to broadband subscribe to it, that number falls to 49.8% in households making less than $20,000 per year. Any serious effort to increase the number of Arkansans connected to broadband must include programs that facilitate and support adoption, especially for low-income households. Without these programs, the digital divide will widen. Cox has long focused on this issue; for nearly a decade we have offered a low-price internet solution, Connect2Compete, that helps support broader adoption. Priced at $9.95/month with a free modem and no installation fees, Connect2Compete is available to qualifying families who receive government assistance. More than 90% of families with Connect2Compete indicate it helps set their children up for success and simplifies communication with educators.

The lack of devices – laptop, tablet or other – also contributes to community members not being connected to broadband. Through partnerships with schools, community organizations and businesses, we can easily overcome the lack of devices. At Cox, we’ve formed a national partnership with PCs for People, which provides discounted, refurbished laptops and accessories to families that qualify for the Connect2Compete program.

Getting all Arkansans connected should be a shared goal for individuals and entities across the state. We, along with other broadband service providers, have long advocated for programs and policies that increase access to broadband. The state of Arkansas has established the Arkansas Rural Connect program using a combination of $4.7 million of state funds and $19.3 million of the CARES Act funds to provide grants to providers to extend broadband networks to Arkansans who do not have access today. We are encouraged by these efforts and urge leaders at the local, state and federal level to continue advocating for funding and solutions that provide all Arkansans the connectivity they need to be safe, successful and prosperous.

Little Rock, Ark. (Aug. 20, 2020) – A new study from the University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service, Arkansas Community Foundation, and UA Little Rock School of Public Affairs shows that Arkansas nonprofits have experienced significant financial distress and service disruptions due to the impacts of COVID-19. You can read the full report here.

Key findings from the Arkansas Nonprofit COVID-19 Impact Study include:

• Nonprofits have lost significant revenue due to the impacts of COVID-19, with 64% of surveyed nonprofits reporting a loss of fee-for-service revenue and 64% reporting a decline in individual donations.

• COVID-19 has also impacted nonprofit employment of paid staff in form of reduced hours, furloughs and layoffs. More than 30% of nonprofits surveyed have reduced employee hours, while 15% reported layoffs.

• Nearly 70% of nonprofits surveyed are operating at a reduced capacity, including complete program cancellations, and many have had difficulty obtaining needed supplies.

Shortages of volunteers, a lack of protective personal equipment (PPE), and adjusting to the shifting needs of clients in response to COVID-19 were among the other challenges that emerged from the study’s findings.

Many organizations also reported making efforts to adapt to the challenges of COVID-19 by finding new and unique ways to deliver their services, including implementing online programs, increasing operating hours to decrease crowds, offering drive-thru services, and increasing partnerships with other organizations.

The study was designed collectively by Dr. Nichola Driver, Assistant Professor and Faculty Director for the Office of Community Engagement at the Clinton School; Dr. Kirk Leach, Assistant Professor in the UA Little Rock School of Public Affairs; and Sarah Kinser, Chief Program Officer at Arkansas Community Foundation. Second-year Clinton School students Jaylin Sprout and Brittany Moody provided research assistance.

“Funding is the most critical challenge right now, since many nonprofits have had to cancel in-person fundraising events,” Dr. Driver said. “We also broke down the findings by program areas and budget sizes. The program areas that seem the most negatively impacted are arts, culture, humanities, health and education.”

The survey was administered between June 22 and July 10, 2020. A total of 316 nonprofit leaders representing small and large nonprofits responded to the survey. Respondents represented nonprofit organizations serving all 75 Arkansas counties and across all nonprofit program areas and budget sizes. Most respondents were from organizations with annual budgets under $500,000 and most operated with paid employees.

Survey respondents were also asked open-ended questions about the most urgent challenges they will face over the next three to six months. Among the responses were funding, lack of volunteer support, the need to move programs into online formats, adjustment to shifting toward client needs, lack of personal protective equipment (PPE), planning through uncertainty, and general health and wellbeing concerns for staff and clients.

“We have seen similar reports surfacing across the country and we felt it was important to have data reflecting what was happening in our state,” Dr. Driver said. “We wanted to get the word out to donors, funders, and policymakers to aid the discussion of next steps.”

A link allowing nonprofits to submit their answers was distributed through email lists owned by the Arkansas Community Foundation and the Clinton School of Public Service.

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About Arkansas Community Foundation

Arkansas Community Foundation is a nonprofit organization that fosters smart giving to improve communities. The Community Foundation offers tools to help Arkansans protect, grow and direct their charitable dollars as they learn more about community needs. By making grants and sharing knowledge, the Community Foundation supports charitable programs that work for Arkansas and partners to create new initiatives that address the gaps. Since 1976, the Community Foundation has provided more than $310 million in grants and partnered with thousands of Arkansans to help them improve our neighborhoods, our towns and our entire state. Contributions to the Community Foundation, its funds and any of its 29 affiliates are fully tax deductible.

About the University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service

The University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service gives students the knowledge and experience to further their careers in the areas of nonprofit, governmental, volunteer, or private sector service. The Clinton School is the nation’s first to offer a Master of Public Service degree, both in a classic campus setting and online. While learning valuable lessons in the classroom, Clinton School students also complete “hands-on” public service projects, ranging from local work in Arkansas communities to international projects on all of the world’s six inhabited continents.

About the UA Little Rock School of Public Affairs

The UA Little Rock School of Public Affairs brings together academic, applied research, and training units that share a focus on government, politics, nonprofit organizations, and public service. Whether you are looking for an undergraduate program that sets you on a path to make a difference in the world, a graduate program that can open up opportunities for you in government agencies or the nonprofit world, a graduate certificate or training program to improve your skills and bolster your resume, or assistance with applied research on public policy issues, the School of Public Affairs offers many opportunities to help individuals, agencies, and organizations to improve.

Little Rock, Ark. (Aug. 3, 2020) – Holly Dunsworth of Clarksville, Walter “Vance” Smiley III of Little Rock, Scott Van Horn of Russellville and Sharon E. Wilson of Forrest City have been named to the board of directors for Arkansas Community Foundation, a statewide nonprofit organization that fosters smart giving to improve communities.

“We are thrilled to welcome these new members to our board of directors,” said Heather Larkin, President and CEO of Arkansas Community Foundation. “All of them have a rich history with the Foundation, but each brings a unique perspective and leadership style to our board.”

Holly Dunsworth serves the University of the Ozarks as acting dean of students and visiting instructor of communications. She co-hosts events throughout the U.S. and Central America to advance the mission of the university. Previously, Dunsworth led the advisory board of the Johnson County Community Foundation.

In 2018 Vance Smiley founded BankWorx, a new fintech company that partners with progressive banks to digitize and automate legacy products and processes. He spent 15 years leading Smiley Technologies, Inc., a family-owned business that builds and services core banking technology solutions for community banks.

Scott Van Horn is co-owner of Sugar Creek Foods International and is managing partner of the Van Horn Family Partnership. He is a past advisory board member of the Pope County Community Foundation where his father, Mac Van Horn, was a founder.

A CPA and owner of a public accounting practice in Forrest City, Sharon Wilson began her accounting career in 1990, with the Coopers and Lybrand accounting firm (currently known as Price-Waterhouse Coopers.) She serves as chairman of the advisory board for the St. Francis County Community Foundation.

See our full list of Arkansas Community Foundation board members.

2020 was to be a year of dramatic growth for Reaching for Life, Inc. of Star City, a nonprofit training facility that provides sewing classes, meeting rooms and exhibition space for local arts and crafts. The organization planned to have a record number of programs and fundraisers so they could move from all-volunteers to a paid, full-time staff and develop additional programs.

Then Covid-19 hit. Reaching for Life leadership didn’t even know where they would get funds to pay utilities for the rest of the year. Then Arkansas Community Foundation awarded them a Rapid Response Mini-grant.

“I do not think it is an exaggeration at all to say that the Arkansas Community Foundation grant of $1,000 saved our organization,” said Detri L. McGhee, Executive Director of Reaching for Life. “We were able to pay utilities and to purchase elastic, ribbon and additional supplies to start making masks.”

Using sewing machines purchased with a 2017 grant from Delta Area Community Foundation, an affiliate of Arkansas Community Foundation, the organization’s volunteers began to make masks. They continued offering sewing classes and received donations of fabric for the masks.

The variety and quality of the masks caught the eye of consumers, and Reaching for Life sold enough masks to pay for utilities in March, April, May and June plus pay off most of the moving expenses from a relocation to a rent-free facility at The Village. Additional mini-grants were received from the Shelter Insurance Foundation and Delta Dental Foundation.

“We gave many needy people masks at first,” said McGhee. “The staff at Dalton’s Place Assisted Living in Star City were overcome with appreciation when they received free masks.”

One training success story for Reaching for Life is a Star City woman who has established her own mask-making and sewing crafts business, TJ’s Creations. “We led her through the legal framework, explained technical issues of getting the ability to take credit cards, helped her set up a tax ID number, found her an excellent fabric supplier and then watched her market her products successfully. We saw her become a true entrepreneur for the first time,” McGhee said.

To learn more or to support Reaching for Life, call 870-370-0160.

Now is the perfect moment to call on our community to place young children and their families center stage where they belong.

At the Community Foundation, we work with some of the best donors and partners in the state. Every now and then, new donors show up to remind us why we do our work and give us hope for the future. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit Arkansas in March, Cathy and Denton Seilhan stepped up in a big way and gave generously to our COVID-19 Relief Fund. Not only did they give money, but they also brought passion, experience and expertise to a longstanding cause that needs attention in Arkansas: Early Childhood Development.

The Seilhans are transplants to Northwest Arkansas and have lived there for about a year. Like so many who move to Arkansas, they felt warmly welcomed by their community. Cathy shared, “We had been visiting and enjoying the beauty of Arkansas and the warmth and friendliness of Arkansans, and we marveled, really, at the kind and caring people we’ve met.”

Denton Seilhan was in the underwater connector manufacturing world and was a business owner of a medium-sized company in San Diego. When they first met on a dating website, Cathy lived in Texas and Denton lived in California. Cathy was nervous and hesitant to share too much at first (she wouldn’t tell him her last name and didn’t give him her cell number for six weeks!) but after lots of emails back and forth, something shifted for her. Trust and friendship quickly blossomed, and he proposed soon after. Ten years later they share five children and seven grandchildren.

“We have different perspectives on politics and some other things, but those differences have actually helped us grow and learn more,” said Cathy.

One of her passions is working with children. An educator for 30 years, she focused on early childhood development as well as language and literacy development. When asked what prompted her passion for helping children she explained, “Denton and I began looking at ways to support the children in our community through charitable giving in about 2015. When we moved to Arkansas, we began learning about all of the organizations here in the state that provide help to families in need, and we saw that there exists here in Arkansas a living network of concern that can be harnessed to create rapid and far-reaching innovative changes in the lives of families facing adversity.

“We need to treat our youngest children as what they are – our most important asset. You can’t talk about successfully opening the state or being ‘back to normal’ unless you talk about childcare in the context of the science of child development,” said Cathy. “This time – as a society – as members of a vast network of overlapping communities within Arkansas, let’s focus on the specific needs of our citizens who are 0 to 5 years of age. “

We agree with Cathy’s assessment. There are strong correlations between economic stressors and what are knowns as ACEs – Adverse Childhood Experiences. These are experiences which create an environment of ongoing stress – known as chronic or toxic stress.

According to the Arkansas Department of Health, children who experience adversity in the first years of life are more at-risk for negative social, emotional, educational, behavioral, cognitive and health outcomes throughout their lives. Childhood adversity has many faces, including:

Poverty
Toxic Stress
Fractured families, including divorced and/or incarcerated parents
Living with a caregiver who abuses alcohol and/or illegal substances
Lack of a nurturing home environment; including parental depression
Harsh parenting practices, including abuse, neglect and maltreatment
Poor educational opportunities, attainment, and expectations
Lack of access to critical preventative health care services

The average household earnings in the state of Arkansas in 2020 was nearly equal to the federal poverty rate, just above $26,000 for a family of four. This means the average family in our state was in a precarious financial situation even before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The nature of this emergency is such that many people have lost and are losing their employment – further compounding the economic impact of the COVID-19 health crisis.

“I know firsthand, both from my experiences as an educator and as a mother who was a single parent for about seven years, that lack of economic security greatly impacts the health and well-being of the parent or caregiver – often leading to outcomes such as parental depression, which is in itself another ACE,” said Cathy. “Once the child experiences one area of adversity, they often begin experiencing a second, and so they compound like this, often leading to multiple ACEs.

“For a young child, the way the brain works is that we look around our environment and ask, ‘Am I safe here?’ and if the answer is ‘No,’ and things are unstable and chaotic, the brain and nervous system go into constant alert. The effects of this impact can be profound. In a classroom, these kids are likely to have challenges with their attention and may have difficulty listening, following directions, and calming themselves down or otherwise regulating their own behavior when upset or frustrated,” she said.

“When left unsupported, these children are at greater risk of having difficulty with all academic endeavors and have far greater challenges going all the way through school. It is more difficult for them, as adults, to participate in the economy in a robust way as wage earners, thus perpetuating the conditions of adversity for their own children.”

Research shows that the longer we wait to intervene in the lives of children at high risk, the more difficult it will be to achieve positive outcomes later in life. Programs and policies that increase family resilience and human connection are powerful players in the health of children and society.

When asked how we can turn this moment into action at a higher level, Cathy is quick to respond, “I truly believe that it is by collaborating very broadly in our communities and across the state and country that we can help our children by helping support the child’s family. I would love to see us, as a state, conduct active forums to discuss, translate and apply new knowledge from the science of human development and ACEs. We need long-term but quickly shared research and to test targeted interventions to help heal trauma inflicted by Adverse Childhood Experiences. And I believe it calls for vast collaboration in our schools, throughout our health care settings, throughout the judicial system, in our places of faith and most importantly in our homes.” Again, we agree. The time for action is right now, the place to create rapid and transformative change is right here and the agents that create change are us…all of us.

By Kim Dishongh

A $25,000 COVID-19 Phase 2 Adaptation Grant from Arkansas Community Foundation is making it possible for Child Care Aware of NWA to help facilities that have been caring for the children of essential workers throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.

Childcare for essential workers has remained a critical need throughout the pandemic, but many childcare centers are suffering because a significant portion of their clients are working from home or have lost their jobs and aren’t currently using childcare services.

Carolene Thornton, director of Child Care Aware of NWA, said some of the grant funds will be used to purchase equipment and programs to make it simpler to provide childcare center staff with required professional development and training.

“We have a big conference every year in May for about 300 or 400 people, and we had to cancel it,” said Thornton. “We did that virtually. We had about 50 or 60 people come online to do it. We may do that again in the fall. They had problems with their professional development requirements, and we wanted them to be able to get in their professional development hours.”

Some of the centers, especially those where several of the children have parents who are on the front lines treating patients in hospitals or in poultry plants where COVID-19 outbreaks have been reported, have asked for help in sourcing cleaning products, personal protection equipment, hand sanitizer and paper towels.

“We couldn’t find booties for a while. They’re supposed to have booties to go into the infant toddler room,” said Thornton. “I was surprised when some of them told me they couldn’t get paper towels. There’s a lot more cleaning they have to do, a lot more they need to wipe things down. We’re just scrambling trying to find what they need.”

Other childcare centers need assistance in making payroll payments, with the number of children enrolled down and the expenses associated with caring for them up, both situations the result of COVID-19.

Thornton plans to survey child care centers in the area to see what their biggest needs are so Child Care Aware NWA can direct grant funds to assist with as many of those as possible in hopes of helping struggling centers keep their doors open so they can be ready to serve families as they do return to work.

“We’ll just do what we can to help them,” she said.

For more information about Child Care Aware of Northwest Arkansas, visit them online or find them on Facebook.

By Kim Dishongh

Southern Bancorp Community Partners is using a $25,000 COVID-19 Phase 2 Adaptation Grant from the Arkansas Community Foundation to support Arkansans’ long-term financial health.

Southern Bancorp will offer credit counseling for individuals who had to defer payments because of COVID-19-related lost wages or unemployment as they return to the workforce. The organization’s certified counselors will work with people, either remotely or in person, who may want to focus on rebuilding credit, avoiding foreclosure and remodeling or even purchasing homes. Past data suggests many of these clients will be small business owners, according to Karama Neal, president of Southern Bancorp Community Partners.

“There are a number of organizations who are providing immediate support for folks, which is fantastic – people who provide food support or rent support, things which are incredibly needed,” shares Neal. “What we can do is make sure that as the recovery happens, people are well-positioned to recover and to ideally be in a bit better shape than they were maybe even before the pandemic.”

The grant is also supporting Southern Bancorp Community Partners’ Volunteer Income Tax Assistance Program, through which IRS-certified volunteers prepare taxes for income-eligible families and making sure they have access to refunds and that they take advantage of any and all tax credits they may have earned.

“For example, the Earned Income Tax Credit, which many have called the largest poverty reduction measure in the country,” said Neal. “That’s federal dollars that could be in our state circulating in our families’ pockets, in our communities’ pockets, in our businesses’ pockets, but if we don’t claim it, it never gets to Arkansas. So we want to make sure that people who are eligible for that Earned Income Tax Credit receive it.”

Southern Bancorp Community Partners is also using grant money to support other programs that help people become more economically mobile, like Individual Development Accounts that encourage savings efforts through counseling and education and rewards those efforts with matching funds. The goal is to help people accumulate assets that they can depend on when emergencies arise.

“When folks have those kinds of assets, then they’re more likely to be economically mobile,” said Neal. “That’s really what Southern was founded for, and the kinds of things that this grant is supporting really facilitate that.”

To contact Southern Bancorp Community Partners and to learn more, visit https://southernpartners.org/

The work continues. We have surveyed our nonprofit network and they are still reporting a higher than usual demand for services across the state. Nonprofits are still experiencing the “perfect storm” of increasing demand for services with decreasing donations. From food insecurity, housing, transportation, utility and rental assistance, social distancing requirements and broadband access… People still need help and they are turning to local nonprofits to find it.

Since March and the activation of our COVID19 Relief Fund, we have made 799 grants to 722 organizations in 149 Arkansas towns in 67 counties. That was part of a two-phased approach of grantmaking and we are actively developing criteria and a plan for Phase Three. As the state and businesses open up, but cases of COVID19 also are on the rise, the nonprofit sector is still feeling the strain more than ever. That’s why Arkansas Community Foundation continues to connect donors with nonprofits doing frontline pandemic relief.

Gratefully, Arkansas businesses and families have stepped up in amazing ways. Just this week, one Arkansas Family Foundation made an anonymous donation of $150,000 to the COVID19 Relief Fund specifically for six Arkansas nonprofits providing food to those in need:

We are so thankful for the generosity that still abounds in our state. If you or your business is interested in helping with pandemic relief, our Development staff will be happy to help connect you to a cause or community. We are still accepting donations to the relief fund and hope that businesses and individuals who can help, will.