The exact page text, read by your browser's voice.
1922 — the first gift; early 1990s — the Clarke gifts
The first gift: The Community Foundation of Greater Fort Wayne began, on 2 June 1922, as the Fort Wayne Foundation, and its first documented gift was William Mossman's 5,000 dollars — five thousand dollars that started a century. The foundation was terminated on 2 December 1941 and reborn on 1 August 1956; it took its present name in June 2005. Its full record is in the Nonprofits leg.
The largest gifts: The foundation's growth from a local trust to an institution holding some 247 million dollars in assets at the end of 2024 was driven, in its decisive decade, by two people. In the early 1990s Paul and Helen Clarke gave the foundation a series of gifts totaling more than 20 million dollars — the largest documented giving to the community foundation in its history, and the gifts that carried its assets past 30 million dollars by 1995. The figure is a series total, printed as the foundation's own history states it, not a single check; it stands in the ranked table labeled as what it is. The foundation those gifts capitalized has granted more than 195 million dollars since 1922.
Sources:
- Community Foundation of Greater Fort Wayne — institutional history and financial statements (assets at 31 December 2024; cumulative grantmaking), as compiled in the Nonprofits leg of this history.