Yes We Can! have new foundation for Bham schools

Just over a year ago, the parents, teachers and community leaders of Birmingham spoke, and Yes We Can! Birmingham listened. The result was a Community Agreement, summarizing all the things the people of Birmingham want for their children and their public school system. Thanks to Yes We Can! Birmingham, a grassroots initiative of the [...]

Kids explore symphonic music with special concert

Wednesday, September 23, was the first day for a series of Explorer Concerts by the Alabama Symphony Orchestra and an extra-special day for the Community Foundation of Greater Birmingham, which provided a grant to support these education programs for kids from Pre-K through Grade 2.
The orchestra will give two more performances in this series, at [...]

What do scholarships mean to you?

If you’re one of the fortunate folks who got help in paying for your college education from a scholarship, you already know how much it means to have someone make a gift to your future in that special way.
But did you ever think about why those caring individuals, families and businesses decided to make [...]

Principal training academy great news

One of the promises of the Yes We Can! Birmingham grassroots campaign in 2008 was to form a separate nonprofit organization to support Birmingham City Schools and to keep citizens engaged in this important work. The Community Foundation of Greater Birmingham fulfilled this promise by creating the Birmingham Education Foundation (BEF), which recently saw school [...]

A different kind of Catalyst sparks new leaders to action

Sustainability. Culture. New Leadership. With those three pillars of a progressive community, more than 1,000 members of the group called Catalyst continue to challege young citizens to get involved and do more.
Their slogan is “It’s Hip to Be Civic,” and they prove the truth of that every time that gather for a Green Third Thursday [...]

Birmingham Change Fund builds philanthropic ‘family’

The Birmingham Change Fund is officially listed as a giving circle of the Community Foundation of Greater Birmingham. But you might call it the Birmingham Change Family, since the varied members of this group have grown as close as the best kind of family as they have shared their time, talent and treasure to create [...]

YPs say what we can do right now for greatest impact, Part 2

We had so many great comments from visitors at the YP Expo on June 11 that we haven’t had time to share them all. Here are some more ideas from thoughtful and dynamic members of Generation Next! From crime to childhood obesity, the concerns are there, but also many great solutions and ideas for [...]

Parents can become great teachers

Not everyone knows exactly what to do to help their child succeed in school. But programs like the RUSH Initiative, supported with a number of grants over the years by the Community Foundation, help parents become the great teachers, the all important first teachers, that they want to be.
Take a look at this recent post [...]

One newspaper’s view of the Community Foundation

As we look back at a great week after our annual meeting on May 11, one highlight was the editorial in the May 15 edition of The Birmingham News. Their editorial board summarized much of the work and the role of the Community Foundation in a way that we would like to share.
The Viewpoint [...]

Leadership and accountability

In Chapter 6 and 7 of “Community,” Peter Block talks about the difference between being a citizen and being a consumer or client, someone who takes no accountability for what is going on in a community.
In this context, the issue of leadership becomes one of engaging citizens in a sense of “communal connectedness” — that [...]