A letter from board member Marianne Rosica-Brand.
Dear Friends,
For as long as I can remember, the unspoken message from my parents about “Uncle Bill” was that they admired his thirst for knowledge and his entrepreneurial spirit. Because of this, for me, it is both an honor and a privilege to be part of the McGowan Fund and to shoulder part of the responsibility of continuing Bill McGowan’s legacy. I had the good fortune to be able to look up to Uncle Bill as a child and was then able to know him more closely as an adult when I moved to Washington, DC, after college. This connection is something I treasure greatly.
I bring to the board the rural perspective on poverty, which is incredibly isolating and can be even more challenging to overcome. Northeastern Pennsylvania has some degree of rural poverty, however, there are large cities there, which do not exist in my community. This means in Yates County where I live, we have a limited number of nonprofits coupled with a limited number of industries to support the nonprofits.
Several years ago, I attended a foundation conference where I first heard about the importance of third-grade reading levels in students and was stunned by the impact that this could have on a student’s future success and the likelihood of them graduating from high school. I came back to my community with a fire in my belly. I created a roundtable of community members and leaders from education, healthcare, and other fields to discuss the issue. To make a long story short, after 18 months of meeting monthly, we drilled down and understood that this work would really need to begin at the pre-K and kindergarten levels. With some discretionary grant dollars from the McGowan Fund, we were able to develop and implement Hop on the K-Train, an initiative that targeted and supported early learning from birth to pre-K in concert with medical and daycare providers.
When I inherited summerLEAP as a potential grantee, I was thrilled to work with an organization that is helping the children in Rochester be set up for success. I love how summerLEAP continues to grow and increase the number of students they are able to serve while focusing on the child’s needs and the needs of their families.
In general, I am a strong advocate for programming that contains wraparound services that help serve the whole individual. Programs that collaborate and cooperate with other programs and agencies are ultimately able to help more of those struggling, whether that’s to feed their families, find a place to call home, or improve their situations.
Foodlink, the food bank in Rochester, does this incredibly well. They work to end hunger and build healthier communities by mobilizing a diverse network of community partners to address both the symptoms and root causes of food insecurity throughout the Greater Rochester and Finger Lakes region of New York. Fortunately, one of the many communities they serve is Yates County, the county I call home and an area that is considered a food desert. I’m able to see directly the impact of their programming through the support of our Hope Center Food Pantry and our once-a-month pop-up pantry.
I care deeply about my community and am so honored to witness the impact our grantee organizations are making. I love when we can establish a working relationship with successful nonprofits, and my hope for our current grantees is that they continue to be innovative and progressive in their programming. For potential grantees, I’d recommend that they do some research on what programs and types of nonprofits we have funded in the past few years, and they shouldn’t hesitate to reach out to our helpful staff with questions before beginning an LOI or grant application. We value their time and want their grant application to have a good chance at receiving approval.
Looking forward, particularly for Rochester, we need to help our grantee organizations with capacity building, but I have no doubt that we can accomplish this goal. Much like my uncle, our board is a determined group and very motivated to make positive change. Our years together have shown that when we work closely with our grantees, we can accomplish great things.
Sincerely,
Marianne Rosica-Brand
Board Director