Community foundations lay the foundation

For several valid reasons, the initial ask didn’t feel optional.

The boss had a table for the Winston-Salem Foundation’s annual community meeting and wanted some company. It was being held on a Monday afternoon in the Benton Convention Center and would feature a social hour and a keynote speaker.

Hm. It’d mean wearing a coat and tie; I don’t even like wearing pants. But the boss, we’d been informed, was going. It’d be bad form to leave him hanging.

And to my eternal amazement, mostly because my mugshot has appeared atop a column in these pages for nearly 20 years, there comes some responsibility to act like an adult and chat with people who get things done in the community. Fly the colors, as it were, since the Journal was the title sponsor.

As it turned out, there were no tables per se. Just open seating laid out in rows across an enormous (and nicely appointed, thanks to city ⅔ bond money) meeting room.

The Foundation’s community meeting, its first since COVID shut the world down three years ago, went off extremely well.

For those who don’t know – or had forgotten – the meeting served as a timely reminder of the good things benefitting the entire community that flow through the foundation’s stewardship.

A few numbers to chew on:

*Total assets worth $770.6 million, a remarkable number considering the Foundation began in 1919 with a single $1,000 contribution;

*$78.8 million in grants;

*In 2022, more than 1,400 donors contributed with $44.2 million in gifts;

*1,659 charitable funds were supported;

And every nickel is local.

“Community philanthropy, by design, mobilizes people for a common purpose,” said LaTida Smith, the president of the foundation.

The night’s speaker, Heather McGhee, the author of New York Times best seller “The Sum of Us/Why Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together, served food for thought as well in sharing some of her observations from traveling the country

“Understanding our history and seeing our present with clarity … is the only way to thrive,” McGhee said.

Community philanthropic foundations help and re-learning something about how they do that was more than worthwhile.

Even if it meant wearing pants on a Monday.

GREENSBORO – A photo, it’s been said, is worth 1,000 words.

Those who write for a living might say that the words add context, a hand in glove situation as it were, but a good photograph can make a statement.

A photo of the enormous Liberty Road water tower being constructed to serve the Greensboro-Randolph megasite – specifically Toyota’s electric vehicle battery plant – is one such example.

Toyota, recall, committed in 2021 to building an EV battery plant at the site, pledging a total $3.8 billion capital investment. That will beget 2 million square feet of space across three buildings. Most importantly, the whole shebang is expected to employ at least 2,100 people.

But seeing a photo of that water structure with the Toyota logo towering over raw, red earth where it’s all being built is a powerful sign of what’s to come.

WINSTON-SALEM – Sometimes an email just catches your attention. 

So it was with an email with a photo attached that landed earlier this week. I can’t remember who sent it or why, but the subject matter did leap out.

No, it wasn’t that kind of photo.

Instead, it featured a wheel and a quart of motor oil and the heading Basic Car Care & Maintenance for Teens.

The Forsyth County Public Library is hosting a hand-on instructional session at the Central Library from noon to 2 p.m. for teens interested in learning something about how that machine operates and how to take care of it.

Practical skills for a generation sometimes maligned for not knowing how to change a tire.