Indianapolis leaders tout the city as forward thinking and innovative, so it should come as no surprise that the Circle City was one of the first in the U.S. to create a community trust. The first public community foundation was created in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1914. Just two years later — a full century ago — The Indianapolis Foundation was established.
The foundation set out to make a difference with one overarching goal: improve the quality of life in Marion County. To expand its reach, the Indianapolis Foundation partnered with Hamilton County’s Legacy Fund in 1997 to create the Central Indiana Community Foundation (CICF).
Today, the Indianapolis Foundation awards roughly $7 million each year to various not-for-profit organizations working toward making that difference.
But Alicia Collins, CICF’s community collaborations manager, said the foundation’s role extends far beyond just funding.
“We do more than just grant making. We also convene organizations to come together focusing on common goals and outcomes, and we are also a connector, so we help organizations that may not know they’re doing the same work come together,” Collins said. “I’m also on the ground working directly with communities and building those relationships not just with the institutions, but with the people.”
Though the foundation is a resource for all of Marion County, many of its efforts have focused on the Black community, because that’s where the resources have been needed.
“We respond to the community and support community needs. Part of our job is understanding where the needs are,” Collins said. “We know the pulse of the community.”
37 Place, a community center in the Martindale-Brightwood neighborhood, where 93 percent of the population is African-American, is one example of the foundation’s work converging with community needs to improve life for the city’s Black population.
“The foundation had a history working through another initiative in Martindale-Brightwood called Making Connections Indianapolis, and there was interest in that community to have a community center,” Collins said.
The foundation set its sights on vacant Indianapolis Public School 37.
“A lot of the residents are alumni and had deep connections to that school. We also had an opportunity through a donor who wanted to see that school support the community,” Collins said. “The Indianapolis Foundation took the lead in fundraising for that. We had conversations with residents and built a resident advisory council to direct the foundation.”
Today, 37 Place is known as “the heartbeat of Martindale-Brightwood” and houses the Edna Martin Christian Center, the Art With a Heart program and more.
Two youth-oriented programs at the Avondale Meadows YMCA have also benefited from the foundation’s assistance for years: Future Leaders, which focuses on youth who have been involved with the juvenile justice system, and Achievers, which focuses on college readiness and career preparation. About 95 percent of the youth served by the two programs are African-American, and many come from low-income, underserved families.
Meresa Creekmore-Armor, associate vice president of community development and executive director of Avondale Meadows YMCA, said the foundation’s help was directly responsible for adding two missing components to the Achievers program.
“With the support of CICF, we were able to add another layer of programming — our post-secondary efforts — where we were able to track our students and then provide additional resources to them in college,” she said. “Then we added a component to our program … to create a transitional summer program for young people who are transitioning from elementary to middle school. That was a way for us to connect with those kids before they got into middle school and then engage them in our pipeline.”
LaShanda Lang, senior program director at the Avondale Meadows YMCA, said the foundation has been much more than just a funder.
“They’ve actually come along as a partner,” she said. “They also help in terms of connecting us with like organizations, also being able to leverage resources and create sustainability plans. They’ve been great as a partner, not just as a funder … but also helping us to tackle community needs and identify those.”
The foundation also played a role in the development of the Avondale Meadows YMCA as a whole.
“As we moved from being a program center to a full-facility YMCA, they were one of our biggest advocates helping us to connect to the community and making sure we were in the right circles and were knowledgeable about other programs and organizations in the community,” Creekmore-Armor said. “That advocacy has been instrumental.”
