Family & Children’s Center Wins the Community Foundation’s 2011 Leighton Award For Nonprofit Excellence
The Community Foundation of St. Joseph County has named the Family & Children’s Center, under the leadership of Bruce Greenberg, the winner of its 2011 Leighton Award for Nonprofit Excellence.
Founded as an orphanage in 1882, the Family & Children’s Center has served the St. Joseph County community continuously for 128 years. This highly complex organization consists of the Boys & Girls Clubs, The Children’s Campus, FCC Counseling and Development Services, and Prevent Child Abuse St. Joseph County. Together these organizations address many of the most pressing and difficult social problems of our times, including teen pregnancy, mental illness, family dysfunction, child abuse, and the persistent achievement gap between children from low-income families and their more affluent peers.
During his five years of leadership, President Bruce Greenberg has visibly streamlined the organization, improved its operating efficiency, upgraded its use of technology, established challenging standards for performance and outcomes, and has pushed FCC to grow to meet needs that have skyrocketed during what is referred to as the Great Recession. The Children’s Campus and FCC Counseling and Development Services have earned and consistently maintain the Gold Seal of Approval from the Joint Commission, the nation’s leading health care standards-setting and accrediting organization, for demonstrating high standards for safety and quality of care, and nearly 3,000 local students participate in Boys & Girls Club programming.
As this year’s Leighton Award winner, the Family & Children’s Center receives a $100,000 endowment challenge grant and must raise $100,000 in matching funds. The resulting $200,000 will be used to create or add to a fund in the Community Foundation for the Center’s benefit. The Family & Children’s Center receives an additional $10,000 to help cover the costs of any fundraising and communications associated with the match.
Also, the Foundation named two Special Recognition winners, each of which will receive an award of $10,000. Special Recognition awards are intended to encourage organizations that are pursuing higher degrees of excellence, recognizing inspiring examples of service and performance. The Community Foundation’s first 2011 Special Recognition award goes to St. Margaret’s House, under the leadership of Kathy Schneider, for having created a unique community of women helping women over the past 20 years. In 2009, over 1800 different women and children benefitted from some form of assistance from St. Margaret’s House, addressing needs such as permanent housing, literacy, job training, employment, mental health services, and health care. Its second Special Recognition award goes to WNIT-TV Public Television, under the leadership of Mary Pruess, in recognition of the impressive vision reflected in the creation of the new WNIT Center for Public Media.
Established by Judd and Mary Lou Leighton and the Leighton-Oare Foundation in 1999, the Leighton Award encourages all of the community’s nonprofit organizations to pursue excellence at every level of their operations.
Previous winners of this annual award include LOGAN (2000); Center for the Homeless (2001); South Bend Heritage Foundation (2002); REAL Services (2003); St. Joseph Health Center at Chapin Street (2004); Goodwill Industries of Michiana (2005); Center for Hospice and Palliative Care, Inc. (2006); South Bend Civic Theatre (2007), the YWCA of St. Joseph County (2008), the St. Joseph County Public Library (2009), and the Women’s Care Center (2010).