Community Foundation for Nantucket

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About the Community Foundation for Nantucket:

The Community Foundation for Nantucket works to enhance the well-being of our community by addressing critical issues and supporting the social, physical, cultural, economic, and environmental conditions essential for all Islanders to flourish and fulfill their potential. Our mission is to strengthen Nantucket now and for future generations through thoughtful philanthropy and community leadership.

In pursuit of this mission we act as a:

Grantmaker – by strategically awarding grants through the Nantucket Fund™ and donor-directed funds to critical island nonprofits to support their work and provide essential services to our island community.

Charitable Resource – by maintaining a trusted in-depth knowledge of the nonprofit sector, we provide education, discussion forums, resources, and managerial support to donors, nonprofits, and the broader community.

Convener – by organizing community leaders to assess Nantucket’s most critical needs and facilitate collaborative solutions.

Steward – by creating and managing funds to ensure a permanent legacy for charitable solutions and providing donors with informed gift-giving advice.

To visit the Community Foundation’s website, click here.

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About the Foundation
A Thriving Nantucket Begins With Us

A Thriving Nantucket Begins With Us

Islanders answer what community means to them, and then the people who run island nonprofits say what Nantucket Fund grants paid for. One grant hired a retired Secret Service agent to run security audits for the schools and the YMCA. A Safe Place describes years of steady support. A speaker recalls cooking for island children as the pandemic took hold. The hospital explains how much of what a patient needs sits outside clinical care, and a travel fund helps seniors and others reach treatment off-island. Others name scholarships, and a first grant in 2021 that let their organization open at all. It closes on an invitation to get in touch and find a way to take part.

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#CommunityMeans

#CommunityMeans

A half-minute cut of islanders finishing the same sentence. Community means unity, connection, diversity, helping and support; being better together; a place where people care about each other and there is room for every voice; the feeling of belonging; being supported enough to be your best. When anyone here needs something, one speaker says, the community at large turns out. It draws on the same interviews as “A Thriving Nantucket Begins With Us.”

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Giving bACK w/ Sunny Daily, Executive Director of the Community Foundation for Nantucket

Giving bACK w/ Sunny Daily, Executive Director of the Community Foundation for Nantucket

The first episode of NCTV’s Giving bACK, in which Arthur Bergeron — a semi-retired elder law attorney, and the host of Frank & Mary before this — interviews his new co-host, Sunny Daily, about the Foundation she runs. She came to it almost four years ago from direct health care work on the island, as a midwife, doula, childbirth educator and lactation consultant, wanting a wider reach than one family at a time; she started as program director and took over as executive director two years later. She describes a community foundation as a resource rather than a cause: for donors who care but do not know where the need is, for nonprofits that want professional development or help with a strategic plan, and as a back office for groups that would rather run their own work than their bookkeeping — the Island Fair is her example, one of 108 funds the Foundation holds. She is firm that the Foundation began as a grassroots effort by islanders twenty years ago rather than as a company’s foundation, and that its endowment exists so the money stays on Nantucket permanently. Bergeron makes the case for legacy giving and for the idea that you need not be rich to leave one. They also cover the Nantucket Fund as pooled giving at any size, the grant process with its financial review and an interview for every applicant, and scholarships — moving online, dropping the FAFSA requirement, and one bequest large enough to fund a substantial award every year. It closes by handing off to an interview with NCTV.

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Interview with Executive Director Margaretta Andrews and Victoria McManus on 97.7 ACK

Interview with Executive Director Margaretta Andrews and Victoria McManus on 97.7 ACK

A radio interview on 97.7 ACK, opening with the Nantucket Fund’s call-to-action spot. Margaretta Andrews, the Foundation’s executive director, and Victoria McManus, its board president, set out the mission — to strengthen Nantucket now and for future generations through informed philanthropy and community leadership — and explain the community roundtable behind it. Island leaders were asked what the priorities were and answered housing, mental health and substance abuse, transportation, child care and after-school care, and an inclusive community that embraces the island’s diversity. They walk through the grant cycle, from applications to a committee that reads every one and makes a site visit to each applicant, and give the previous year’s figure of nearly $150,000 to twenty-six recipients. They finish on the free grant recipients’ breakfast held on the Friday of Stroll weekend, which they call the best event of the season.

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Nantucket: An Island Community

Nantucket: An Island Community

A short documentary about what the Foundation does and who it reaches. It opens on the distance between the Nantucket people come to visit and the island people struggle to afford, then turns to the nonprofits that help and to three year-round trustees, who explain that the Foundation takes a view of the whole island rather than a single cause. Three grants carry the film. The food, fuel and rental assistance program describes a recession year in which the Foundation found an anonymous donor to match gifts and ran the advertising that brought them in. A family whose daughter was diagnosed with juvenile arthritis describes the travel fund that covered trips to Boston for appointments and MRIs, and the volunteer who runs it explains why an island needs one at all. The literacy program at the Atheneum traces its growth from ten students in the basement to some sixty within months, and two of its students talk about passing their citizenship tests. Donors close the film on why they set up their giving funds here.

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Grant Ceremonies
2024 Nantucket Fund Grant Ceremony

2024 Nantucket Fund Grant Ceremony

The 2024 ceremony, held at the Whaling Museum, at which the Nantucket Fund handed out $500,000 to twenty-nine island organizations — a forty percent increase on the year before, and, the Foundation notes, half of what was asked for. Sunny Daily, the executive director, explains how the priorities are set, then calls the recipients up by sector: behavioral health, health care, child care, elder care, basic needs, food security, after-school and youth programs, arts and culture, and housing. Each organization introduces itself and says what its grant will pay for — trauma therapy for survivors of domestic violence, medically assisted treatment for addiction offered without regard to insurance or ability to pay, pre-kindergarten readiness, elder transport, rental, fuel and utility assistance, the warming place, the food pantry, after-school programs, and paid conservation work for young adults. NCTV is among the recipients, for an ambassadors program run with the Alliance for Substance Abuse Prevention.

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2016 Grant Recipient Awards

2016 Grant Recipient Awards

The 2016 grant recipients’ breakfast, held at the Nantucket Hotel on Stroll weekend. Margaretta Andrews, then the executive director, opens by announcing more than $155,000 to thirty-one recipients and sets out the vision the Foundation had arrived at by convening island leaders. The Courtney and Jason Bridges film is screened early on, one of a series of short videos the Foundation commissioned about what the island needs. Recipients are then called up in groups by priority area — mental health and substance use, elder services, education and literacy, health care, food and housing — and each speaks for a minute or two about the program the grant will pay for. It runs an hour and three quarters, and amounts to a survey of the island’s nonprofit sector in one sitting.

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Island Voices
Annye Camara on Housing
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Annye Camara on Housing

Annye Camara, owner of Annye’s Whole Foods, answers the question the Foundation put to each of these speakers, and her answer is housing. Finding somewhere for an employee to live is a regular feature of her winter and spring, she says, and often she fails at it — and she is one employer among many. Nantucket still thinks of itself as hospitable and as a community, and if that is true it has to look at what the community actually needs: if nobody helps a new arrival find a good place to live, somewhere safe to bring a family, there will not be a community left to talk about. Housing, she says, is foundational. She argues that parts of the island have become invisible, that a place this small has the chance not to divide the way the rest of the country has, and that the work is to stop thinking about your own life for a few minutes and lift every boat. She ends on a line from a friend — the island has saved a lot of land, and now it should save some lives. The Nantucket Fund spot closes the film.

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Courtney and Jason Bridges on the Community Foundation for Nantucket
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Courtney and Jason Bridges on the Community Foundation for Nantucket

Jason Bridges, who runs Nantucket Bike Tours and the Handlebar Cafe, and Courtney Bridges, executive director of Small Friends on Nantucket, on what they call the hidden Nantucket — the island you drive past without seeing. He describes people working three jobs to stay here, and what happens to a family when the housing goes. She describes delivering Meals on Wheels down roads she had driven for years without knowing who lived on them, and the elders who were glad of a visitor. On child care she recalls a family who came in that same day saying they would have to leave the island if they could not find care they trusted. Both argue that as the year-round population grows the voices asking for help get harder to hear, and that the Foundation’s job is to raise their volume. The Nantucket Fund spot closes the film.

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Rob Cocuzzo on Some of Nantucket’s Needs
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Rob Cocuzzo on Some of Nantucket’s Needs

Rob Cocuzzo, editor of Nantucket Magazine, on the needs that are easiest to miss. He describes islanders living in cars and choosing between necessities everyone else takes for granted, and tells the story of a former Nantucket teacher and homeowner who ended up living in her van, moving it each night to somewhere safe enough to take the epilepsy medication that would put her out until morning. Homelessness on Nantucket sounds unbelievable, he says, until you count it. He calls the Foundation’s annual breakfast the one morning most people hear what the grants actually did, and describes the Nantucket Fund as a safety net stretched across the cracks nobody is looking at. The Nantucket Fund spot closes the film.

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Max Berry on the Nantucket Fund
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Max Berry on the Nantucket Fund

Max Berry makes the case for giving through the Foundation rather than directly. Everyone knows the four or five large island nonprofits — the hospital, the Atheneum, the Historical Association, the Boys & Girls Club — and nobody knows the hundred or so others, or which of them is short of what. The Foundation does, and can direct the money accordingly. His second argument is aimed at seasonal residents: they are more a part of the island than they expected to be, they are not going to learn its needs from New York or Washington or Houston, and one gift to the Foundation covers the ground that dozens of separate appeals would. He ends on the line that the good news is the island has all the money it needs, and the bad news is that it is still in your pockets.

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The Nantucket Fund
Invest in the Nantucket Fund, Make a Difference Here.

Invest in the Nantucket Fund, Make a Difference Here.

An appeal built out of the Foundation’s first fifteen years. It begins in 2005, when a group of local residents set out to support the quality of life for a growing year-round community, and argues that the Foundation’s particular value is reaching the organizations summer residents have never heard of. Nonprofit directors describe what a year-round presence on island changed for them, and what Nantucket Fund grants mean for the food pantry and for fuel and rental assistance. One speaker calls it islanders investing in other islanders. The figures given are more than a hundred funds under management, assets above $17 million, and a Nantucket Fund endowment past $7.2 million against a $10 million goal, with the pandemic named as the reason the need had deepened.

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Embolden Nantucket Fund

Embolden Nantucket Fund

A narrated minute on how the Foundation is put together and what it is for. Funds established by individuals, businesses and families sit under one roof, and the Foundation’s other work is to grow philanthropy toward whatever the island needs most. Staff work with the board, civic leaders and nonprofits to keep track of where that is: mental health support today, elder services or coastal erosion tomorrow. It closes by asking for a gift to the Nantucket Fund, the community’s endowment.

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The Nantucket Fund, Make a Difference Here

The Nantucket Fund, Make a Difference Here

A wordless montage set to music. It opens on the Nantucket Fund mark over an illustrated shoreline and lighthouse, then moves to white-framed photographs strung from a tree branch, each swinging into view in turn: island children and elders, a classroom, people at work, a gathering, a street in summer. It closes on a sunset over the water and returns to the mark. There is no narration.

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Community Foundation for Nantucket

Community Foundation for Nantucket

The Nantucket Fund’s call-to-action spot, and the piece that closes several of the Island Voices interviews further down this page. It argues that the island’s strength is how interconnected it is, that local leaders were invited to name the key issues, and that a vision came out of that conversation: a Nantucket where everyone equally and inclusively has a place to call home, has support when coping with personal struggles, knows their children are safe and active during the workday, can rely on year-round affordable public transportation, and may age gracefully with trust in the services they need and deserve. It ends on the line the Fund is built around — invest in the Nantucket Fund, invest in Nantucket, make a difference here.

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