What Our Donors Say

Thomas George is an internationally recognized artist with works in major museums, universities, corporations and private collections worldwide. He has donated most of his paintings and drawings to the Community Foundation, where he has set up the Thomas George Artists Fund to assist young artists at the outset of their careers. 

"My mom, Mary Lynne Franks Mount was a creative teacher who recognized that reading with enthusiasm is a key that unlocks the doors to learning—to be able to write well; to do math; to explore the worlds of science, history, and beyond,” explains Mary Lynne’s daughter, Ingrid Benson.

Henry Rosso Jr. was a generous man with a dry sense of humor and a love for his family, friends, and town. As the colorful owner of Rosso’s Café on Spring Street in Princeton for forty-eight years, he was both connected to, and a part of, the cast of characters that was twentieth-century Princeton.

“People can go the Community Foundation and create whatever they want to create.” —Miki Saraf

Rebecca Annitto was an organizer, an energetic, entrepreneurial young student at Stuart Country Day School and the coxswain for her crew team at the Mercer Junior Rowing Club when her life was cut short by a car accident in 2005. 

Jim Roberts was born in 1928, at the height of the Jazz Age. As a teenager during the 1940s he often went with his parents and sister to thriving jazz clubs in New York City. He became a lifelong lover of the idiom, amassing deep knowledge and a formidable collection of vinyl recordings.  He and his wife, Pat, in turn, took their own kids to the Newport Jazz Festival.

“When Jim died in 1988,” Pat recalls, “My two sons and I were trying to think of what to do in his memory. I donated his records to the Rutgers Institute for Jazz Studies, the world’s largest archive of jazz materials, but we wanted also to create something individual and ongoing. We had heard about the Community Foundation, so I called them.

“With the foundation’s help we created the Jim Roberts Jazz Scholarship Fund, which has given needy students the means to take lessons, to discover and pursue musical talent that would otherwise go undeveloped. Before I knew about the Community Foundation, I never thought I could set up something like this, much less manage it on my own. At the Community Foundation, everything was in place for me.

“Our fund has made annual gifts to the Trenton Community Music School. We made a grant to a public school where the music teacher was buying instruments with her own money so that low-income students could take lessons. I love doing this, because these kids learn so much more than music. They learn good habits and the value of practice and discipline.

“It’s tremendously rewarding to attend a recital and hear a young musician whom our fund has helped. I’ll never forget one in Trenton where a six-year-old drummer was being backed up by four professional jazz musicians. That gifted young performer isn’t likely to forget it, either.

“I especially love working with the Community Foundation’s staff. What I’ve found absolutely wonderful is how well their investments have done. Our fund really did grow. It was amazing to grant money, then look later and see that we would have almost the same amount to work with next time!  

“Another happy discovery has been that I never feel hemmed in about what the money can be used for. After Hurricane Katrina, many New Orleans jazz performers were wiped out. Their instruments were ruined. Some were hospitalized. We were able to grant a sum of money to Tipitina’s Foundation down there. The Community Foundation vetted the charity — they research target organizations carefully — then they moved quickly and handled all the administration of the grant. So what we’re doing has spread out beyond New Jersey.

“I’m happy I could tell you about my experience at the Community Foundation. I can’t say enough about the people there.”

Louis Boxer returned from his harrowing World War II service as a front-line combat medic determined to help better the lives of young people and to fight the forms of prejudice he had seen and experienced during those years. He decided to study psychology. He put himself through college and a PhD program at night, became an expert on teen development, and served many years as the much-beloved school psychologist at Brooklyn Technical High School.

 Since she was ten years old, Diane Dixon was devoted to the performing arts. She started the Theater Guild of New Jersey, promoting unknown actors and giving undiscovered playwrights the chance to see their work performed. When Diane died in 2001, her will established the Diane Dixon Fund at the Community Foundation to continue her lifelong work of bringing the arts into people’s lives.

Her good friend, Lydia Kugler, was executor of Diane’s will. “The Community Foundation was incredibly responsive,” Lydia says. “I sat down with them and talked about Diane’s love for theater. They were genuinely interested in getting to know what Diane was all about. They’d say, ‘We’d like your input; this is what we propose to do with Diane’s gift.’

“They were very forthcoming with information, and I can’t say enough about their willingness to keep me involved. I get calls on a regular basis to keep me updated on how Diane’s fund is doing, and where they’re making their grants.

“Diane was born and raised in Robbinsville,” Lydia says. “She was instrumental in seeing that the new Senior Center there would have a stage for performances and would welcome the arts. When the Foundation is giving grant money to the Robbinsville High School drama club, it’s fitting to Diane’s memory that she’s still involved in Washington Township in the arts and the plays. And she is smiling about that, I can tell you right now.

“I think the Community Foundation is incredibly sensitive to what I believe Diane’s intent would be. Diane gave some money to several other organizations directly, but in many instances there were no specifics from them, nor any correspondence with me, as executor, about how the money was to be used. By contrast, the Community Foundation is keeping me apprised of everything that is going on with the funds and where they are using the grant money.

“Diane Dixon wanted to make a name for the arts in New Jersey. She didn’t have time to do all that on her own, but the Community Foundation is going to make sure that it happens."

Keith Wheelock, professor of history at Raritan Valley Community College, comes from a family that felt an obligation to give back. “I remember going with my mother to a Philadelphia warehouse where we packed food boxes for Allied prisoners of war,” he recalls. “In 1951, my father, with Edward R. Murrow, founded This I Believe, short statements of conviction by people from all walks of life. In 2003, I helped bring a modern-day This I Believe to public radio.”

Keith’s college teaching caps a career in the Foreign Service, business, finance, and government. His unrestricted bequest to the Community Foundation will be a legacy of his lifelong charitable work. “I wanted to do something that would touch people,” he says. “The Community Foundation provided the answer. When I attended a program at which beneficiaries described what they had accomplished with Community Foundation money, I went away with the confidence that the Community Foundation would be a superb guardian of my bequest.

“The real ‘ah-ha’ moment was when I got an e-mail announcing that the Community Foundation would help local nonprofits with their operating expenses. I’ve chaired nonprofits, and I know that virtually every grant they receive says ‘This is not for administrative or operating expenses.’ Yet operating expenses are the fuel that keeps a nonprofit’s engine running. Unless there is gasoline for the engine, the car is going nowhere. Typically, those kinds of grants will say where a nonprofit is supposed to go, without putting any gas in the engine. But here is the Community Foundation, focusing on operating expenses in a time of economic difficulty, when most sources of aid are cutting back and reiterating their standard policies. To me their approach made so much sense, and was so gutsy, that I said, it’s exactly what I want to do—for good times or bad.

“So my major bequest will be to the Community Foundation, giving them a free hand to provide operating expense support to organizations that, in the professional judgment of the trustees and staff, are most deserving. I totally trust them.

“As a one-time president of a national consulting firm, I am an admirer of Peter Drucker, who focused on the importance of running nonprofit groups in a businesslike way. I find his criteria for nonprofit managerial excellence met and exceeded by the Community Foundation. They’ve identified worthy nonprofits in community development, arts and culture, basic services, and other core hands-on areas. They’ve attracted business and civic leaders who provide policy guidance to the foundation and offer management assistance to the grantees.

“Because I’m an entrepreneur, my orientation is to invest in people through a really savvy organization. The Community Foundation has rigorous benchmarks. They have a track record over the years of discovering and supporting key aspects of our extended community, particularly those folks who tend to be ignored—the part of community that needs and deserves help, innovators who can do a lot with little. I can’t think of a better place to determine how a limited amount of money can best be used. Anyone who goes to the annual event to hear the recipients talk about what they are doing can only say, wow, the Community Foundation got it right.

“And for a potential donor new to philanthropy, for someone with a sense of wanting to do something for their community but not sure how, the Community Foundation is an excellent place to start. They are experts at helping donors help people who help themselves. You can’t create the people, but you can identify them, and you can assist them. And if they don’t come up to reasonable standards, you can assist someone else who can. That’s really good! That’s what excites me.”