Stories

Videos: Story Bank

  • Building Healthy Communities in South Carolina

    After days of contentious and emotional arguments, South Carolina’s political leaders decided to remove the Confederate flag from the capitol grounds. One lawmaker opened the debate in the House by reading aloud the names of nine parishioners murdered inside Charleston's Emanuel AME Church. The man charged with killing them apparently posted a manifesto featuring photographs of himself...

    Bernie Mazyck
  • Reframing the Issue: Inside the 2014 West Virginia water crisis

    On January 9, 2014, 300,000 people in and around Charleston, West Virginia, woke up to a licorice-like odor emanating from their tap water. Thousands of gallons of coal-processing chemicals had spilled into the Elk River, plunging nine counties into a state of emergency. Health officials issued warnings against drinking, cooking with or bathing in the water.

    Government leaders were...

  • The Value of Land

    The Center for Heirs' Property began as a project of the Coastal Community Foundation (CCF) in 2002 with input from heirs’ property owners, attorneys, judges, nonprofit service providers and funders. In 2005, The Center was established as its own nonprofit to meet the overwhelming need from low-income heirs' property owners for free educational and direct legal services.

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  • Appalachia Funders Network

    The Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation has a long history of investing in Appalachian people and places. To foster collaborative funding in the region and increase collective impact, MRBF helped co-found the Appalachia Funders Network (AFN). The Network consists of public and private grantmakers who envision a sustainable regional economy that builds on existing assets to create multiple forms...

  • Emerging Leaders: Equity and Opportunity in the American South

    In 2011 the Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation hosted a trans-generational convening on the topic of equity and opportunity in the American South. We wanted to understand the needs of emerging nonprofit leaders in the South and what they saw on the horizon of their work. The conversation also included respected elders in the sector who helped ground the conversation in historical context and...

    Emerging Leaders Gathering