Lincoln Neighborhood Basis’s annual occasion provides new civic management award

The Charity Award, given to Invoice and Marilyn Cintani, acknowledges the philanthropic contributions of a person or couple in our neighborhood, and new this 12 months, the JoAnn Martin Civic Management Award, offered to Dr. Mae Colleen Jones, acknowledges and celebrates neighborhood management. The honorees for each these awards have been chosen by the Basis Board’s nominating committee from an intensive checklist of worthy leaders in our neighborhood.

Mayor Leirion Gaylor Baird’s opening remarks commented on the synchronicities of this 12 months’s recipients and their deep dedication to their neighborhood.

“Our honorees this 12 months had very particular relationships with their companions,” she mentioned. “Companions whom they beloved dearly and with whom they expressed their love of one another and our metropolis by means of acts of service and present giving.”

Invoice and Marilyn Cintani grew to become the twelfth recipients of the Charity Award. Invoice and Marilyn are recognized for his or her beneficiant contributions to so many corners of the neighborhood, and for his or her work in partnership with the Lincoln Neighborhood Basis.

With the assistance of Tom and Lisa Smith, the Basis approached Invoice and Marilyn in regards to the award earlier than Invoice’s passing in December.

“We’re honored they accepted, and that we’ve got the chance to have a good time Invoice’s legacy as a neighborhood chief and philanthropist and as our trusted adviser and pal,” mentioned Basis President/CEO Alec Gorynski. “His deep love for Lincoln is carried on by means of Marilyn, their kids and their grandchildren, who’re right here with us immediately.”

Invoice introduced his imaginative and prescient and management to the Basis’s board from 2012-2017. He served as board chair and previous president. Throughout Invoice’s time on the board, he noticed the influence a match can have on encouraging donations by means of Give to Lincoln Day. Impressed by this idea of leveraging, in 2018, Invoice and Marilyn pledged matching {dollars} from their private fund for brand spanking new donor suggested funds established on the Basis.

Invoice and Marilyn’s son, Brian, shared that leverage was typically one thing Invoice would take into account along with his giving.

“It was essential to him that there be a multiplier impact on among the donations he’d make,” mentioned Brian. “He felt like if he might use the cash on the Raikes Faculty to fund a summer time internship, it could perform as an funding and never only a grant. He wished to see it develop and multiply.”

Marilyn’s coronary heart guides the problems she helps, focusing her philanthropy on kids and younger households by extending sources to assist these enduring difficult conditions.

“My dad had ardour in philanthropy, and so does my mother, however they different,” mentioned daughter Laura Frantz. “My mother’s important ardour in her life is her household, so I believe that trickles right down to the place she’s obsessed with giving.”

The Cintanis’ modest method to philanthropy has been regular and caring – giving alternatives to those that won’t have them in any other case. They honestly epitomize what it means to provide, act and lead.

“The Charity Award was actually established for the neighborhood, so the neighborhood had a strategy to thank a person or a pair for his or her great management, their philanthropy and their service,” mentioned former Basis President Barbara Bartle. “After I take into consideration that criterion, I can consider nobody however Invoice and Marilyn being so deserving of this award. They slot in each class.”

The JoAnn Martin Civic Management Award was established to acknowledge a person who has demonstrated a robust dedication to civic management. The nominating committee outlined this as a person who possesses servant management qualities and expresses her/his servant management by means of volunteer service to our neighborhood, to incorporate management service with nonprofit and civic organizations in various capacities.

The award first offered to JoAnn Martin shortly earlier than her passing within the fall of 2021 by a bunch of neighborhood leaders included leaders from Ameritas and NRC, who additionally established an endowment on the Basis to maintain JoAnn’s management legacy.

In cooperation with the Martin household, the endowment is getting used to develop and maintain the Girls in Enterprise Management program in partnership with the Lincoln Chamber of Commerce.

JoAnn Martin was a member of the Lincoln Neighborhood Basis Board of Administrators and was scheduled to be the board chair from 2022–2023. For that reason, and in recognition of the Basis’s emphasis on neighborhood management, the award’s founders and the Martin household agreed the Basis’s annual program is the proper residence for the JoAnn Martin Civic Management Award.

Now retired, Jones has spent her profession in academia, nearly all of which was with the College of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL). The explanation for her recognition was not simply due to her management all through her skilled profession, but in addition due to her intensive historical past of neighborhood service.

The nominating committee recognized almost 20 distinctive cases of Jones’ formal neighborhood management service, together with volunteer management roles with the United Method, Management Lincoln, Friendship Residence, Sheldon Musuem of Artwork, Lied Middle for Performing Arts and the Lincoln Neighborhood Basis.

“Actually, in early conversations about Dr. Jones because the potential recipient of this award, we’d typically hear people exclaim ‘After all, Colleen is concerned in all the things,’” mentioned Gorynski.

Colleen is a founding chapter member and officer together with her sorority, Alpha Kappa Alpha, and president of the Melvin W. Jones Scholar Neighborhood at UNL, named for her late husband. Cynthia Milligan, who served as dean of the School of Enterprise when Colleen was a school member within the Administration Division, commented on the influence of the Jones Students.

“I believe her main contribution was the Jones Students,” she mentioned. “I think if one had the chance to speak to these college students, they might say that she was one of many main individuals of their lives giving them the impetus to remain and do effectively within the college and to maneuver on.”

As Jones grew to become the second recipient of the JoAnn Martin Civic Management Award, she mirrored on the journey that introduced her and Melvin to Lincoln. That they had each determined early on to assist one another’s skilled path and “bloom the place we have been planted.”

“When Melvin died, I used to be reminded of a Maya Angelou quote, ‘You might not management all of the occasions that occur to you, however you may resolve to not be lowered by them,’” she mentioned. “It was not tough for me to step up and turn into extra visibly lively in Lincoln – as a result of the views of Black individuals, girls and ‘transplanted’ new Nebraskans are important to the well being, progress and way forward for this neighborhood.”

Colleen’s sorority sister, Karen Williams, commented on how Colleen’s management mirrors that of the award’s first recipient and namesake.

“I consider one of many issues that JoAnn Martin mentioned was that it solely takes one particular person to volunteer to make issues occur, and Colleen is unquestionably proof of that,” she mentioned. “The philosophy that she shares with so many individuals, the arduous work that she’s accomplished for thus many organizations and simply the girl that she is with the most important coronary heart and the kindest spirit – I can’t consider anybody extra deserving.”