Community Foundation celebrates 90th year
Published: October 02, 2009, 12:30 am
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When the family of Barber Conable, late congressman from Alexander, could no longer manage his charitable foundation alone, the Conables turned to the Community Foundation for Greater Buffalo to help.
Conable’s daughter, Anne, was among 300 guests Thursday in the WNED-TV studios helping the Community Foundation to mark its 90th anniversary by honoring donors, like the Conables, whose collective generosity has allowed the foundation to pursue its mission to improve the quality of life across the region.
Conable’s father, who was appointed president of the World Bank by President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, established his own foundation in 1998, mainly to assist charities in Genesee and Wyoming counties, where he had roots. He died in 2004.
“We decided several years ago that we were not in a position to continue the foundation independently, and we made the decision to move our foundation into the Community Foundation,” Anne Conable explained.
“It means you can do more good than you could by yourself. My family was not in a position where we were going to be able to continue running a foundation on our own. We’re not lawyers [or] philanthropists,” she added.
Clotilde Perez-Bode Dedecker, president and chief executive officer of the Community Foundation, said donors, over the past 90 years, have granted more than $100 million through the foundation to support scholarship programs and other charitable endeavors across the region.
“This [event] is specifically celebrating the generosity of all these people that you see here who do all of their philanthropic giving through the Community Foundation,” Dedecker said.
Dennis Galucki, a donor and creator of a donor-advised fund, the Center for the Study of Art, Architecture, History and Nature, said the foundation “creates a vehicle for well-intentioned people that want to see the community [become] a better place than they found it.”
The event Thursday also provided an opportunity for the Community Foundation to bestow awards on four individuals and two service organizations for their community service.
hmcneil@buffnews.com
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