Blog

May 24, 2019

Summer will soon be here, bringing along the fun and excitement of special vacation planning. Researching your destination, shopping for the best airfare prices, and gathering the proper travel gear may top your checklist, but as you update your passport or purchase travel insurance, why not also use this opportunity to review your will and […]

May 17, 2019

Brain science demonstrates that for children to reach their full potential, communities need to support the ability of families and childcare programs to provide specific experiences when the brain benefits most – in the first few years of life.  “Responsive interactions at the right stages of development help determine how well children think and regulate […]

May 8, 2019

Shaneen Sloan, a native Arkansan, witnesses the generosity of people in our state daily. As a partner with Hyden, Miron and Foster PLLC, she provides her clients with smart giving advice as they begin to think about giving back to the community they call home. To Shaneen, smart giving advice means offering insight on the […]

April 15, 2019

A story from our 2018 Annual Report The first Crawford County grant of the newly expanded Western Arkansas Community Foundation helped fund a summer arts camp at the Center for Arts and Education in Van Buren. Ken Kilgore, a board member of both organizations, explained that the grant to fund the summer program for students […]

April 2, 2019

Does tax season get you thinking about how you gave in 2018? What goals did you create for yourself and how did you reach them? Year-end sneaks up on all of us, especially as we consider tax-deductible donations. We may find ourselves rushing around to respond to the needs of multiple nonprofits or hastily deciding […]

March 28, 2019

School Counts!  This workforce development partnership between Morrilton’s business community, the county’s K-12 schools and the University of Arkansas at Morrilton is supported by the Conway County Community Foundation because of its clear relationship to community growth and personal opportunity. “Since it started back in 2006, our local Community Foundation has made significant contributions to […]

March 19, 2019

Thirty years ago, the late H.L. and Janelle Hembree began one of the first donor advised funds at what is now the Western Arkansas Community Foundation with a gift of $104,000. To date, Hembree family members have made almost $2.2 million in grants to nonprofits in Fort Smith and Northwest Arkansas from the proceeds of […]

March 12, 2019

A Qualified Charitable Distribution (QCD) is a direct transfer of funds from a traditional IRA account to a public 501c3 nonprofit, such as the Community Foundation. A QCD can count as all or some of the IRA owner’s required minimum distribution (RMD), and the QCD amount is not added to taxable income as an RMD […]

March 8, 2019

Arkansas Community Foundation created the Aspire Arkansas report to provide a county-by-county look at the quality of life in Arkansas. From that report, we learned that only 37.8% of our state’s third-graders can read on grade-level. Only 37.8%. A mountain of education research confirms that third-grade reading levels are a strong predictor of future success […]

February 26, 2019

For three years, Misty Ward of Magnolia’s East Side Elementary dreamed of having a book-mobile that would deliver reading programs to kids during the summer. After doing some research and finding what worked for other Arkansas school districts, she decided to form a plan.  With only 29 percent of Magnolia K-3 students reading on grade-level, […]