The Butler, Snow, O’Mara, Stevens & Cannada, PLLC Foundation has awarded grants totaling more than $61,000 to community organizations in the Jackson, Miss., Nashville, Tenn. and Memphis, Tenn. areas. Foundation donations for 2013 are focused on health and wellness programs, high-tech learning initiatives for at risk youth, children services and food outreach to underprivileged families.
The Butler Snow Foundation has given nearly $1 million in community grants over the past 16 years. This year’s foundation recipients:
- Mission First – Founded in Jackson, Miss., in 1991, this is an inner-city nonprofit designed to serve others at their point of need – through children’s education programs, sports, community development, medical and dental services, legal assistance and wellness programs. This $25,000 contribution is to continue strengthening the agency’s legal aid program.
- Youth Life Learning Centers – A faith-based organization operating after-school programs for at risk youth in Nashville and Memphis. This $15,000 contribution is to help fund the centers’ Youth Life Digital Learning initiative, which provides high-tech learning environments, tablets, iPads and educational apps to youth.
- The Nashville Food Project –Provides access to healthy foods in homeless and working poor communities across Davidson County. Contributions of $15,000 were made for a cold storage unit for the project’s meals program.
- Caritas Village, Inc. –Uses art, music, hospitality, theatre, classes, and connections to creatively join people together in common goals from many different ethnic, racial, and socioeconomic backgrounds. Contributions of $6,000 for kitchen equipment for the organization’s coffee shop and cultural center, a fixture in the community.
“We are honored to deliver the foundation’s contributions each year, and it is certainly one of the most enjoyable things any of us does,” said Foundation chair and Butler Snow attorney Tommy Williams. “Our only regret is that we cannot make grants to every deserving organization.”
The Butler Snow Foundation was established in 1997 by a generous gift from a client of the law firm of the same name. The Foundation funds worthy causes or social services organizations in communities Butler Snow serves across the Southeast. Since its inception, the Foundation has supported organizations such as Mission First, Habitat for Humanity, Youth Life Learning Centers, Mississippi Episcopal AIDS Committee, Hands-on-Memphis and the Boys & Girls Club of the Gulf Coast.