Скачать или смотреть COVID-19: MSCF's Buck Duncan on Scholarships and Non-Profit Emergency Funding

Buck Duncan and his board of the Mid-Shore Community Foundation had a lot on their plate when the severity of COVID-19 hit early last month. The first and most pressing was to make decisions on the hundreds of applications for scholarship support the MSCF provides every year to the Shore's most deserving students. Without the ability to meet in person with the Foundation's scholarship committee, Buck's team had to process every one of those appeals through teleconferencing. Over $500,000 of support was granted, and to the great relief of those high school students and their parents, notices of those awards will be sent out next week.

The second most urgent challenge was how to support the hundreds of nonprofit organizations in the five-county area that have been devastated by the coronavirus crisis. Without the capacity conduct, spring fundraising galas, and other seasonal campaigns, many of those critically essential agencies are facing exceptional financial hardship while maintaining their mission.

Almost immediately after the state declared its shelter at home order, the MSCF set up its COVID-19 Fund in an attempt to support the hundred-plus organizations affiliated with the community foundation. Within days, the MSCF has found $100,000 to start the Fund, which was matched within hours by area businesses.

In his Spy interview yesterday, Buck gives an overview on those two programs and ends with a moving appeal to support friends and neighbors who are heroically serving the community as first-responders and health care workers, as well as the hundreds on the frontline who continue to do their job under these overwhelming circumstances.