History

The community foundation movement began in 1914 in Cleveland, Ohio. By pooling the grant-making functions of a number of charitable trusts, bank trust officers and other donors sought to ensure that community-based grant-making expertise would more efficiently meet the needs of their community.
Other major cities followed Cleveland’s lead, and today, nearly 700 such community foundation serve donors and charities in specific geographic locations across the state, across the country and around the world.
Founded in 1981 by Judge R. Paul Campbell to serve Centre County, the Centre County Community Foundation is now a collection of over 125 individual funds, all dedicated to improving the quality of life of our communities by their support of a variety of charitable objectives.

The Centre County Community Foundation is a unique community resource:

It is dedicated not to distant national or international causes, but to our local communities, to the charities that affect our neighbors and ourselves in the most immediate way possible. Few are untouched by the work supported by these funds.
It embraces not one, or even several, of the strains of important work of these charities. It exists to support them all, to provide a financial foundation for the entire charitable infrastructure that makes Centre County such an exceptional place to live and work.
It is designed by the citizens of our communities for our citizens. The variety of charitable objectives that can be supported by its funds make it extraordinarily adaptable to the needs of our communities in perpetuity.
It is a public charity with public accountability, governed by a volunteer board of local residents representing our diverse geographical and charitable interests.