The Community Foundation is a Monroe County group that creates grants and offers expertise to meet community needs.
With the support of planning grants from the Lilly Endowment in 2012 and 2013, the projects are part of the Strategic Plan for Economic and Community Prosperity in Southwest Central Indiana, which was in cooperation with the Battelle Technology Partnership Practice and issued in November 2014.
The funding will support projects in 11 Indiana counties: Brown, Crawford, Daviess, Dubois, Greene, Lawrence, Martin, Monroe, Orange, Owen and Washington.
“The southwest-central Indiana region is home to an impressive number of scientists, engineers and technicians with more than 2,000 working at Indiana’s only federal lab at Naval Surface Warfare Center Crane, hundreds at Cook Group, and more than 1,000 science and engineering faculty at Indiana University,” N. Clay Robbins, chairman, president and CEO of Lilly Endowment, said. “With the recent extension of I-69, these assets and the people who power them are becoming even more connected, and we are hopeful that this funding will help enhance and secure the future prosperity of the region.”
The largest sum of the funding will go to Regional Opportunity Initiatives, Inc. This newly-formed nonprofit will receive about $26 million to carry out an education and workforce plan and a fund targeted at quality-of-place investments.
The Central Indiana Corporate Partnership Foundation will receive $16.3 million to develop a new Applied Research Institute near the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Crane Division.
A $122,600 share of the fund will go to the Indiana University Foundation to possibly implement a Rural Center at IU, which would focus on challenges faced by rural communities in Indiana.
The grant recipients will discuss details with community members at an event to be organized in early 2016.
Melanie Metzman
