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Smart Giving Challenge At its 16th Annual Meeting, the Community Foundation of Western Massachusetts gave ten randomly selected attendees an exciting opportunity and an intriguing challenge. Each of the following ten attendees, chosen from the 700 in attendance, were given the opportunity to recommend a grant of $1,500 to the charity of their choice. The ten challenge particpants were: Donald Blair, Mr. and Mrs. William Carter, Jeannie Connor, Carol Constant, Peter Greenberg, Teresa Harris, Todd Lever, Judy Paroline, Marie Peirent and Barbara Salisbury. Anyone can give money away willy-nilly. The Community Foundation wants to encourage smart giving. As an encouragement for doing that, the charity which uses one of these gifts best – that gets the biggest bang for the buck - will get an ADDITIONAL, UNRESTRICTED bonus grant of $25,000. To compete for this bonus, all the charity has to do is tell us how ingeniously it used the $1,500. Charities participating in the Smart Giving Challenge will have five weeks to devise, implement and document a strategy to make the most creative and effective use of the original $1,500 grant. A panel of Community Foundation volunteers will then select one charity to receive an unrestricted gift of $25,000. The recipient charities hoping to make the smartest use of their grant of $1,500 and win an unrestricted gift of $25,000 are: Community Music School of Springfield, Junior Achievement, Longmeadow Educational Excellence Foundation, MAB Community Services, Noble Health Systems, Square One, The Children’s Study Home, Thom Springfield Infant Toddler Services, Westfield Atheaeneum and Wistariahurst Museum Association.
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