Heritage Fund-The Community Foundation of Bartholomew County has received a five-year Large-Scale Community Leadership Grant of $3,498,824 through the seventh phase of Lilly Endowment Inc.’s Giving Indiana Funds for Tomorrow initiative.
The grant will support efforts enabling Landmark Columbus Foundation to fulfill its mission of caring for, celebrating and advancing the cultural heritage of the city, and county, according to the foundations’ leaders.
The money will be used by all three of Landmark Columbus’ programs: Landmark Columbus, Exhibit Columbus and Columbus Design Institute.
The grant is the Heritage Fund’s largest one bestowed since the $3 million it gave in 2008 as part of the $18 million cost for the current Commons downtown, said Tracy Souza, the local foundation’s president and chief executive officer.
The two foundations worked for two years on the application process, backed by letters of support from 16 local organizations and agencies as varied as Cummins Inc. and the Columbus Area Visitors Center to the Council for Youth Development Bartholomew County and the J. Irwin Miller Architecture Program, she said.
“No one party alone could have pushed this over the goal line,” Souza said. “One of the things that Lilly was looking for was strong and broad community support. And we really demonstrated that with flying colors.”
Souza mentioned that one other element was especially crucial to landing the money.
“We have such a distinct cultural identity in Columbus,” Souza said, referring to the city’s globally celebrated Modernist architecture.
Richard McCoy, executive director of the Landmark Columbus Foundation, said that Lilly and the Heritage Fund’s financial support for the organization launched only in 2015 “validates what so many have helped create.”
McCoy said when he considers the early planning stages for Landmark, he has one thought about this financial boost toward its mission.
“It’s sort of a dream come true,” McCoy said. “To be able to receive this kind of funding walking hand in hand with the Heritage Fund is really powerful and amazing. And it puts our organization in a position to have an even greater impact.”
McCoy also particularly praised the leadership of Souza and Rick Johnson for their determined work on three separate submissions for the grant.
Heritage Fund is one of 11 community foundations in Indiana to receive a Large-Scale Community Leadership Grant as part of a competitive component of the GIFT VII initiative. Through GIFT VII, Lilly Endowment encouraged Indiana’s community foundations to highlight the most pressing challenges and opportunities facing their local communities, prioritize them and develop plans to address those challenges.
The Heritage Fund board of directors considered a number of potential community leadership initiatives to highlight in the competitive grant program and determined that preserving the modern architecture was paramount.
The Large-Scale Leadership Grants are in addition to non-competitive GIFT VII Community Leadership Grants that Lilly Endowment made last year to 87 of Indiana’s community foundations. Heritage Fund received a $150,000 leadership grant in September 2020.
Announced at the start of Bartholomew County’s bicentennial year, this grant will allow the Landmark Columbus Foundation to enact several initiatives. Those include an in-depth survey and inventory of the cultural resources in the county, to begin an endowment fund and to launch a revolving loan fund.
That loan fund could be a key to entities such as First Christian Church, currently committed to repairing and restoring its famed Modernist structure to retain the design and intent of architect Eliel Saarinen.
Landmark’s Johnson mentioned that the grant “speaks to the importance of maintaining the core of what has made our community so attractive to employers, talented individuals, design experts and those who seek a quality of life not typically found in a midsize Midwestern city.”
