GAF 20th Anniversary Event

“Twenty years is a special number and the trustees wanted to celebrate with community members at a place that held special significance to our foundation and donors. In many ways, Beech Creek and the Greater Alliance Foundation have grown-up together with our first grant to them in 2006 for $17,000 to complete the Plant Science Conservatory Building. Plus, there is no better place to be in Alliance on a nice summer evening than this beautiful garden spot.”

Executive Director Douglas Schwarz

On July 18th, the foundation trustees hosted a 20th anniversary celebration for foundation donors and Alliance area charitable non-profits. The special event was held at Beech Creek Botanical Gardens which has been the recipient of four Greater Alliance Foundation capital project grants.

The 120 people in attendance enjoyed an evening of good food, music, and fellowship. However, before the festivities got into high gear, foundation President David Rodman took a few minutes to welcome and thank everyone for their confidence in our community foundation founded in 1999 with $40,000 dollars and now stands at $16,000,000 in assets. As Rodman remarked to the gathering, “Our charitable work, our impact in the community is directly attributed to you-our donors. Thank you!”

Randy Hunt, Development Committee Chair, then rose to announce a major gift to the foundation from Mr. and Mrs. Jack Peters to endow the Early Childhood Education Alliance (ECEA). Jack and the four other founding trustees were instrumental in the foundation’s early years in creating ECEA to leverage the institutional resources in our community to raise the quality of early childhood education in Alliance. The collaboration of the ECEA partners has been extremely successful and with the Peters’ gift will continue to provide quality early learning opportunities for children for years to come.

To cap the evening, the trustees joined in a ribbon cutting ceremony with the trustees of Beech Creek to dedicate the Levi Lamborn Carnation Greenhouse and Museum. The Lamborn Greenhouse was the vision of long time Beech Creek director Paul Carmichael and came to fruition due to a $15,000 grant from the foundation. With the foundation’s help, Carmichael’s dream to truly be the Carnation City is closer to reality.

It is with great gratitude, that we thank the staff and volunteers at Beech Creek as well as friends of the Greater Alliance Foundation for making our 20-year anniversary celebration a success.