Pictured above: One of the beneficiaries of Arkansas Community Foundation’s work is Urban Patchwork, a nonprofit network of farmers and backyard gardeners such as Gabe Brand, who work to increase access to fresh food in urban areas. (Photos provided)
The word “philanthropist” conjures certain images in a person’s head — someone wearing couture suits and fine jewelry, being driven to their next high-profile charitable event. However, the Arkansas Community Foundation is bringing out the inner philanthropist in all Arkansans as it closes in on 50 years of making communities better places to live.
Heather Larkin, president and CEO of ARCF, said it all started with a $258,000 grant from the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation in 1976. Founded by Mary McLeod, who served as an advisor to Gov. Winthrop Rockefeller, ARCF came to fruition after McLeod developed a steering committee of local leaders from across the state to steer its vision and mission.
Heather Larkin
“It was important to Mary and the committee members that this be a statewide community foundation serving all 75 counties,” Larkin said. “They were all in agreement it didn’t need to be a Little Rock foundation or one for northwest Arkansas or the Delta only. If that had been the case, the rest of the state would not have had access to community funding. They wanted this to be statewide because we are a fairly small, relatively poor state, which is easy to travel, and we can impact every part of our communities. We are headquartered in Little Rock, and we now have a satellite office in Rogers. We also have 29 local offices around the state.”
The foundation is dedicated to helping individuals, families, civic groups and businesses financially support charitable causes. In fact, its sole reason for being is for charitable, benevolent, scientific, religious and educational purposes to benefit the people of Arkansas. While one of more than 700 community foundations nationwide, ARCF is the only foundation in Arkansas through which individuals and corporations can create endowment funds for the public benefit of the entire state and its communities. ARCF has provided more than $600 million in grants since 1976, and it is the largest grant maker in terms of the number of grants awarded in the state.
What makes ARCF most unique, however, is making philanthropists out of everyday citizens.
“Any Arkansan can create a fund,” Larkin said. “It does not matter who you are. Our fundholders range from people who have an interest in helping pets, establishing art programs, funding feeding initiatives to whatever you can think of. If what a funder wants is for a legitimate charitable purpose, we will help match them with others in our community who needs funds to accomplish their shared goals.”
ARCF invests funds from donors — individuals, families, nonprofits and businesses — in endowments and uses the income, or in some cases the income and a portion of the principal, for grants that serve charitable causes throughout the state. By spending only the income from these investments, ARCF ensures these funds will be available to support important needs in Arkansas permanently.
“We believe the best way to bring about positive change is on the local level, and from the beginning, we set out to establish local affiliate offices back in the 1980s,” Larkin said. “This allows the people living in the community to fund projects they know will make a difference. This can be for immediate needs as well as for solutions to long-term problems like food insecurity and illiteracy.”
According to Feeding America, the largest charity working to end hunger in the United States, more than 467,000 Arkansans are facing hunger, and of them, almost 135,000 are children. This means one in five children in the state face food insecurity daily. The ramifications of hunger — from the physical, mental and emotional havoc wrecked on a child to the stigmatization of not having enough to adequately care for that child — do not just impact the family, but on the community, city, county and state overall.
“Hunger and illiteracy are two of the biggest challenges we face in this state,” Larkin said. “At ARCF, we have four pillars in which we focus: health, education, families and community. Hunger and illiteracy are in each of these. If you are a child who does not have enough to eat or who worries if they are going to get to eat, you cannot focus at school. This has a negative impact on your studies, and if you don’t learn to read, that impacts your future in the kinds of decisions you make, the types of jobs you can get, the way you live the rest of your life.
“Those decisions impact your existing and future family as well as the community as a whole. Third grade, believe it or not, is where a child is moving from learning to read to reading to learn. That’s the most crucial time in his education. If we, as a state, can’t feed our kids so they can focus at school to learn and make the most of themselves, we can’t improve.”
What ARCF wants to do, Larkin said, is match donors who have specific interests with grantees sharing those same interests.
“We consider ourselves matchmakers in the sense that a donor may want to direct funds to food insecurity, but she may not know there is a project in another county that can utilize those charitable funds to help more children. The nonprofit seeking the funds may be an organization of only one or a few, and they may not know there is a funder available who shares their vision. That’s where we come in, and it’s an incredible thing when it happens.”
One of the ways ARCF does this matchmaking is through its Aspire Arkansas online database, AspireArkansas.org. Pulling data from sources such as the United States Census Bureau, the Arkansas Department of Education, the Arkansas Department of Workforce Services and more, Aspire Arkansas is “a yardstick to measure where our state currently stands, and a compass to help Arkansans determine where we should go,” the website states.
Jessica Ford, chief communications officer at ARCF, said family conditions in Arkansas are improving in many ways. Teen births and child abuse are declining, unemployment is low and housing is affordable, she said.
Jessica Ford
“Other indicators are headed in the wrong direction,” she said. “Child poverty is increasing, income levels haven’t kept pace with inflation, and the state’s incarceration rate is high and still rising. In addition, many conditions are dramatically worse for African American and Hispanic individuals and families.”
By reviewing data for specific indicators such as children living in poverty, the Aspire Arkansas database pulls an aggregate of statistics into an overall picture. For example, 24 percent of children in Arkansas were living in poverty from 2015 to 2019, a figure which is increasing year over year; the median household income for a family in the state was $47,597 for the same time frame and remained steady; and 6.1 percent of the labor force in 2020 experienced unemployment, which also continues to increase. These numbers tell a story, which ARCF refers to as “data stories,” that are hard to ignore.
“Arkansas nonprofits can use this information to make a compelling case for their initiatives,” Ford said. “We at ARCF understand the landscape of nonprofits within the state, but we don’t always know how a project or ministry or initiative can help improve our communities. That’s where Aspire Arkansas comes in and can be a versatile tool when making a request for funding.”
Larkin said any nonprofit looking for funding should call ARCF for guidance and sign up for its e-newsletter, which includes funding opportunities available through the foundation and other sources.
“After we talk, we forward your request to our donor services team to see if we can find a donor match for your initiative,” Larkin said. “It may not be next week when you see results or even in the next months, but a match can come.”
Another way ARCF helps nonprofit organizations is through gift-in-kind matchmaking.
“Sometimes businesses will upgrade their equipment or have excess office furniture they can no longer use, and they want to provide it to an organization in the community who can use it,” Ford said. “While we don’t pick up and store these items, we do work through our nonprofit network to see who can utilize this gift. Many times, Habitat for Humanity can accept it for their ReStore outlets, or new nonprofits can use desks, printers and other things to furnish their first office. Regardless, it’s community helping community, and we want to help make those connections between the two.”
Making those connections is what has kept ARCF in the business of uplifting communities for almost 50 years. In fact, it works hand-in-hand with professional advisors such as financial planners, lawyers, estate planners and accountants to help Arkansans decide how they would like to direct their money to achieve charitable goals.
“Once, we had a lady who was putting together her estate, and because she was a single woman with no children, she was struggling with what to do with her money after her passing,” Larkin said. “Her attorney told her, ‘I will handle all the legal aspects of this. I want you to go talk with the Arkansas Community Foundation about what you want your money to do for the community.’ She decided, because she was a pet lover, to set up a fund to help animal rescues in the state, and she was able to make decisions on the initiatives we were able to match her with, and she had a wonderful experience.
“That’s why when we say anyone can be a philanthropist, we mean it. It doesn’t matter who you are or how much money you have, you can make a difference in your state, and we can help you do it.”
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