The Valley Community Foundation has grown.
The foundation — which gives donations and scholarships to Valley organizations and causes — added 18 new donation funds in 2010.
The Valley Community Foundation also created a Board of Corporators — a 35-person citizen panel that will complement the Board of Directors.
The new funds and new board were announced Monday at the Valley Community Foundation’s annual meeting at Ansonia High School.
Click the video to see a portion of a performance by the Ansonia High School chorus.
Board of Corporators
The Board of Corporators will help guide the foundation’s decisions, according to Valley Community Foundation CEO and President Jamie Cohen.
“We wanted to engage an additional group of people who can bring to us their responses to what we’re doing,” Cohen said. “This is a way to get some additional input.”
Cohen said several other boards of directors — including the one at Griffin Hospital — have similar citizen panels.
The Community Foundation’s Board of Corporators is made up of seven people from each of the five Valley towns. In addition to those 35 people, officials in the towns are invited to be ex-officio members of the board, Cohen said.
Those elected to the board Monday included: Peter Burns, Terri Goldson, Ned Miller, Jim Ryan, Pablo Barriga, Diane Dunne, Dorothy Gleason, Marc Garofalo, Julia Romano, Rick Belden, Sue Coyle, Pat Carey, Terry Jones, Ray Oppel, Tom Welch, Howie Gura, Rosalie Averill, Mike Horbal, Donald Smith, Fred Stanek, Beth Carson, Kate Cosgrove, Charlene Wright, David Rifkin, Laura Donahue and Angela Powers.
New Funds
The Foundation recognized 18 new funds created in 2010. Several are named in memory of family members.
“By honoring your family’s individual past,” Cohen said, “you have in fact helped ensure the Valley’s collective future.”
The new funds are:
- Ansonia Public Schools Scholarship Endowment Fund
- Ansonia Rotary Club Scholarship Endowment Fund
- Thomas W. Curran Sr. Family Fund
- Francis Family Fund
- Raymond Gildea Memorial Fund
- John Lauretti Memorial Family Fund
- Parent Child Resource Center Endowment Fund
- Louis Schmecker, Jr. Memorial Fund
- Seymour-Oxford Rotary Club Fund
- Seymour Public Schools Fund
- Shelton High School Alumni Association Fund
- Gaeton and Elizabeth Simonetti Family Fund
- TEAM Inc. Endowment Fund
- Peter Vartelas Scholarship Fund
- John and Paraskeve Vonetes Vartelas “Agape” Fund
- Mary Vartelas Stamos Fund
- George Vartelas Scholarship Fund
- Alphonso and Eulalia Vitello Family Fund
Banner Year
Cohen recapped the other achievements of 2010 during his remarks at the annual meeting.
Among them — a new agreement between the Valley Community Foundation and the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven that gives more decision-making power to the Valley Community Foundation.
The Valley Community Foundation also received a third piece of donated property from the Yudkin Family in Derby.
The property — about 4.75 acres on David Humphrey Road — will be sold and the proceeds will be given to the Selma L. and Harold B. Yudkin Fund, Cohen said.
The foundation will also move from Shelton — where Robert Scinto had donated office space for the past six years — to a bigger office in the Adzima Carriage House on Elizabeth Street in Derby this summer, Cohen announced Monday.
“It will give us a place for offices, a waiting room, storage,” Cohen said, adding how grateful the organization was for the donated space in Shelton.
“It was a wonderful thing. It didn’t cost us anything,” Cohen said. “We were very appreciative at the early part of our existence for that space.”
