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1992–today
The institution: The Community Foundation of St. Joseph County was established in 1992, with Rose Meissner as its president from its first year, and it grew into one of the top hundred community foundations in the United States — a growth its own published asset line dates: more than 140 million dollars in combined assets in the early 2020s, over 250 million in its later descriptions, and 327.4 million dollars in assets on its most recent federal filing as compiled in the Nonprofits leg. It awards roughly 10 million dollars in grants a year. Unlike Fort Wayne's community foundation, which a single couple's 20 million dollars carried into scale in the 1990s, no founding fortune stands behind this one in the record reached: its published history names no single largest bequest, and this section prints that plainly. Its largest documented single receipts are Lilly Endowment's — the 5 million dollar education grant and the GIFT VII grants told in the Lilly entry — and its largest documented local receipt is the Leightons' 2.1 million, told above. Its own campaigns work at the scale below those gifts: its ArtsEverywhere initiative generated 6 million dollars in resources for the county's arts organizations.
The older trust: One earlier giving institution seated here belongs to the record. The Stanley A. and Flora P. Clark Memorial Community Trust was established in July 1964 by Flora Clark, widow of Dr. Stanley Clark — a prominent South Bend physician who died on 18 April 1962 — to benefit the residents of St. Joseph County, particularly South Bend, in perpetuity. It predates the community foundation by twenty-eight years and stands as the county's first permanent community trust in this record; its trustee's published account states its purpose and dates, and no founding figure is published with them.
Sources:
- Community Foundation of St. Joseph County — its published history, staff record and initiative accounts; the Nonprofits leg of this history — the asset line and the filing figures.
- Wells Fargo, trustee — the Stanley A. and Flora P. Clark Memorial Community Trust Foundation's published account (established July 1964; Dr. Clark's death 18 April 1962).