Tornado Relief, and More

Written By JILL WHITLEY

When an EF-4 tornado touched down in Newnan in the early morning hours of March 26, 2021, thousands of Coweta County residents were ready to render aid to those displaced by the storm. Desperate to help their neighbors with what felt like insurmountable need, they watched helplessly as images of the devastation filled the local news cycle.

In the days that followed, overwhelmingly generous chaos ensued. Donations of water and canned goods poured in until first the Newnan Police Department, then the Coweta County Fairgrounds, ran out of room. Individuals, families and businesses were eager to make financial contributions, but with hundreds of nonprofit organizations registered in Coweta, how could they possibly know where their money would do the most good?

Founded in 1997, Coweta Community Foundation (CCF) is a publicly supported 501(c)(3) organization that helps focus local philanthropy on the community’s changing needs. The Foundation manages individual gifts and bequests as an endowed pool of assets, distributing grants to a wide variety of organizations that enhance and support the quality of life in Coweta County while maintaining the charitable intent of the donors.

“I like to visualize the Foundation like a tree,” says Kristin Webb, Coweta Community Foundation’s executive director. “The support we receive from our donors is the root system. The Foundation itself is like the trunk. We are able to channel that support into our nonprofit partners, who are our leaves and branches. They, in turn, give back to the community in mission-specific ways.”

The secret to supporting the network of more than 700 nonprofit organizations in Coweta County lies primarily in the power of collective giving, according to Webb.

“No donation is too small,” she says. “While we are fortunate to have incredibly generous annual partners, we can channel individual donations, payroll deductions or bequests into one of our reserve funds, depending on the donor’s specific area of interest. Whether it’s our general grant fund, or our funds directed towards animal welfare, education, fine arts, women and children, or long-term disaster recovery, those funds are ready and waiting to be deployed as the needs of our community continue to evolve.”

No one, however, expected just how rapidly the nature of the community’s needs would change.

In 2020, CCF was not immune to the difficulties of the COVID-19 pandemic, during which the Foundation had to cancel all of its planned fundraisers and “hunker down,” according to 2021 Board Chairman Dean Jackson. By relying solely on a board of volunteers, conserving resources, and simplifying its grant application process for 2021, the Coweta Community Foundation was able to award nearly $30,000 in COVID-19 emergency response grants to assist with the pandemic-related needs of 25 nonprofit partners.

However, just as vaccine rollouts began and Cowetans could see a ray of light at the end of the COVID-19 tunnel, disaster struck in the form of a tornado in March 2021, leaving trees and residents uprooted, and the need shifted as quickly as the wind.

Almost immediately, CCF was able to partner with local emergency management agencies to create a Long-Term Disaster Recovery Fund to manage the overwhelming nationwide support. Corporations, church groups, civic clubs and individuals contributed nearly $615,000 in both large and small amounts.

“It was mostly people wanting to do something, anything, to help,” Jackson recalls. 

Coweta Community Foundation and their sponsors raised an additional $2 million in cash and in-kind donations through Alan Jackson’s “Where I Come From” concert fundraiser in June. The foundation holds those funds in reserve, pooling the contributions to allocate financial assistance to local relief organizations and storm-affected individuals. 

A philanthropic powerhouse, the Foundation is more than solely a financial conduit. By providing guidance to and vetting potential nonprofit partners during their yearly grant cycle, CCF has an encyclopedic knowledge of Coweta’s nonprofit ecosystem, allowing them to guide individual donors to causes they care about – and to help form strategic partnerships between charitable organizations to better accomplish common goals.

​​When nonprofit capacity doesn’t entirely meet community needs, the Foundation works with partners to enhance it. When a local solution doesn’t exist for an emerging or sudden need, they invent it.

Such has been the Foundation’s experience with tornado disaster relief. For example, Webb was working with CCF as a volunteer in May when she created the organization’s initial Hope Has No Deductible Grant to expedite emergency financial and rent support to tornado victims. Meanwhile, the Foundation quickly expanded grant-making capacity within its program.

While much has been accomplished since the storm through traditional nonprofit partners and expanded missions, CCF leaders realized the necessity of creating a common mechanism to unite disaster relief organizations for years to come as Cowetans rebuild and rehouse. Thus, CCF drew on the experience of other communities who have experienced large-scale disasters. Working with local emergency management and charities, the Foundation created a community-based allocations table to focus and magnify financial and volunteer resources to help storm survivors with repairs and construction.

They also formed a partnership with the City of Newnan and Coweta County government to create a Long-Term Recovery Office, led by Director Richard DeWees. These efforts give the community and its many partners the infrastructure needed to create and sustain a long-term program aimed at restoring not only local residents and neighborhoods – but the community as a whole.

“Nonprofit development, education and network building to connect organizations with similar or overlapping missions is a huge priority for the next few years,” Webb says. “In fact, we launched our first annual Nonprofit Summit in early 2022 to promote those goals.”

Webb and Jackson agree that, while the Foundation continues to work with its partners to establish a formal long-term disaster recovery structure for Newnan and Coweta County, they are eager to return to their pre-pandemic operations. The Foundation recently resumed its “100 Women Who Care” initiative and continues to invest in the next generation of local leaders by selecting a new Community Service Team, a volunteer program for philanthropically-minded high school students. The Foundation also serves as the primary fiscal sponsor for the Coweta STEM Institute and partners with the Coweta County School System to support two early intervention programs: Stepping Stones and Puddle Jumpers.

However, CCF is most excited about returning to the heart of its mission: identifying the most prevalent needs in Coweta County as they arise – and funding the nonprofits best equipped to meet them.

“It feels weird to say this, because disaster recovery is such a huge part of our operations right now, and it will continue to be a priority for the next three to five years, but the Coweta Community Foundation is so much more than tornado relief,”  Webb concludes. NCM