charitable giving, grantmaking, community foundations (From The Northern Echo)

charitable giving, grantmaking, community foundations

10:13am Thursday 1st July 2010 in

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Last night I attended the Business In the Community Awards (BITC) in Newcastle, and was very impressed with the level of commitment being shown by businesses in the North East to support local projects.

At County Durham Community Foundation we already know how much our corporate fundholders give in terms of donations and employee volunteer hours etc; but it was gratifying to see what others were doing.

Many of our partners were in attendance and received awards but the main award winner was Ken McMeikan, CEO of Greggs who gave an off the cuff but inspiring speech about how the North East business community must work together to support local people and not wait around for the Government to make it happen. He also commented that the private sector is already very good at that.

In their presentation material, BITC used a quote from Gandhi - 'You must be the change you want to see in the world'. We should all take note of this and try to emulate it as we go about our daily business.