Foundation set to make allocations

Danville Register & Bee
Saturday, September 29, 2007

DANVILLE - Decisions on disbursement of a portion of the $200 million in assets held by the Danville Regional Foundation will be reached by the end of this year, according to the group’s new leader.
After the Danville Regional Foundation’s assessments of the area’s health, education and economic prosperity are completed in the next few months, it will make a decision on how best to invest in the long-term well-being of the community, the foundation’s president and CEO Karl N. Stauber said on Wednesday.
The $200 million endowment is earmarked for distribution at a rate of 5 percent per year - $10 million annually - and must be used to make a positive change in the lives of the residents of Danville, Pittsylvania County and Caswell County, N.C. The bulk of the money remains invested so the fund becomes self-sustaining, and can earn back at least $10 million each year.
“The biggest part of my job is to focus on how to take $10 million and make the biggest impact on the revitalization of the region,” Stauber said. “What we’re looking for is where the greatest opportunities to make a difference are in this one-city and two-county region.”
He stressed that it is very important to the foundation to make a long-term impact in the region, and plans to have very strict guidelines for those who wish to apply for a grant in place by the first of the year.
Essentially, the foundation is looking for area-wide, large-scale problems it can solve, rather than funding a series of small projects that will not impact everyone in the target area.
The first assessment the foundation completed was on the general health of the region and was conducted by a team from East Tennessee State University, which looked at the data on the health of the region, did one-on-one interviews with area health care workers and met about 300 people in small groups to determine what some of the biggest problems are.
Stauber said he was surprised at one statistic the team discovered during the course of this study.
“This area has three times the national rate of deaths due to heart attack,” he said. Exploring the reason for that and finding a solution may be a project on the foundation’s plate in the future.
The current assessment, which is taking a look at the economic prosperity of the region, should be completed in approximately a month, Stauber said, and then the foundation will begin its assessment of the area’s education and work force development issues.
Since its inception in May 2006, the foundation has announced grants totaling approximately $17.5 million to five agencies and organizations in the region, which leaves approximately $2.5 million that can still be disbursed in 2007 - but doesn’t have to be.
Stauber said an important thing to note is that the foundation actually has two calendar years to disburse each year’s allotment - any funds left at the end of a year can be added to the following year’s payout.