Archives: Stories

BGCF Celebrates $150 Million in Total Grantmaking

Blue Grass Community Foundation is celebrating a tremendous milestone: awarding over $150 million in grants and scholarships since our founding in 1967! BGCF was established when C.W. and Irene Sulier invited several Central Kentucky philanthropists to join them in establishing a public foundation to encourage charitable giving and to… Read More

QCDs, RMDs and CRTs: Making Sense of the Secure Act 2.0 Alphabet Soup

Tax-savvy philanthropists may be interested in new provisions included in the $1.65 trillion omnibus spending bill, the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023 (CAA). These provisions, often referred to as SECURE 2.0, build upon the original SECURE Act of 2019 and provide enhancements to the rules for utilizing a qualified charitable… Read More

12th Annual GoodGiving Challenge Launches on Giving Tuesday

Record number of nonprofits participating in region’s biggest online giving event   Get ready for Central and Appalachia Kentucky’s most generous week of giving because the GoodGiving Challenge is back and bigger than ever! With a record-breaking 200 local nonprofits to support, and daily match challenges totaling more than $600,000,… Read More

Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library

Dolly Parton is known for three things: her music, her big hair, and her big heart for early literacy! But the latter is why the country artist and humanitarian’s Imagination Library has continued to grow throughout the country. Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library allows children from birth to age 5 to… Read More

APPHARVEST: Planting Seeds to Feed the Future

AppHarvest and Blue Grass Community Foundation began their partnership in 2021 through Appalachia Rises, a collaborative flood-relief effort for Eastern Kentucky. The partnership between BGCF and AppHarvest deepened when AppHarvest established a corporate charitable foundation at the Community Foundation. Now, AppHarvest is, yet again, investing in Eastern Kentucky – and… Read More

ROBERT L. BROWN’S HOMETOWN LEGACY

Great things are happening in the city of Sharpsburg! Thanks to a bequest from lifelong resident Robert L. Brown, this small city in Bath County is being transformed. Robert, whose family has lived in Sharpsburg for many generations, left an incredibly generous gift through his estate to establish the R. Read More

Why I Give

In 2003 a friend gave me a book that changed my life — although not in a way that anyone noticed or maybe that even I noticed at the time. The book was Tracy Kidder’s “Mountains Beyond Mountains,” an account of how one person was trying to alter the way… Read More

Huntertown: Keeping the memories alive

On August 29, 1871, Jerry Gatewood, formerly enslaved and a U.S. Colored Troop veteran, purchased the first 5-acre parcel of what would become Huntertown Hamlet in Woodford County. Huntertown was one of hundreds of all-Black towns established after the Civil War by formerly enslaved people. Its 50 acres were home… Read More