Founded in 1954,
the Community Foundation of Wabash County began as a means to help a family memorialize their son who had been killed in World War II. The family’s charitable wish was to provide a building for the local chapter of the Boy Scouts. The Foundation was founded, accepted charitable contributions, built the Scout Hall and deeded it to the Town of North Manchester. The Foundation continues today to steward the charitable goals of Wabash County citizens and has grown to nearly $100 million in assets with many strategic initiatives to advance the quality of life of the County.
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Patty Grant, President and CEO of the Community Foundation of Wabash County
In 2012, the Community Foundation board prioritized educational achievement and dedicated its grant-making and resource development to programs and services aimed at helping children and adults advance in education. Educational attainment remains a high priority today. Two innovative programs – Early Childhood Education Accessibility and Imagine Early, an early award scholarship program – demonstrate the Foundation’s commitment to education and prosperity for all.
“What makes the Community Foundation unique is the manner in which we attempt to move the county forward,” says Patty Grant, president and CEO of the Foundation. “In 2012, we prioritized educational attainment and the work that we wanted to do. We saw supporting education as the best way to move the county forward and to help raise incomes, increase population, and attract high-paying jobs. More recently, we’ve joined other county officials and led the development of a comprehensive plan for growth named Imagine One 85.”
Childhood Education and Affordable Child Care
Vice President of Strategic Initiatives Julie Garber says the Foundation chose early education as a focus for grantmaking 13 years ago. Access to affordable, high-quality child care is a struggle in many communities, including Wabash, but their solution to the lack of high-quality, affordable care has been unique.
For years, child care has been made affordable for families by compensating caretakers at a low rate.
“We have taken this model and turned it upside down,” Garber says. “Instead of saying child care costs too much, we argue that we do not pay enough for child care in our communities. But how do we make the child care business model work without burdening either families or caretakers?”
Leaning on the work of other communities around the country, the Foundation started to think about how children could be enrolled at affordable rates and child care staff could still have well-paid positions.
In 2022, the Foundation invited licensed child care centers and registered ministries in Wabash County to participate in a new business model for sustainable child care that took them out of their comfort zones. In the first phase of
Operation Change the Future, programs were challenged to push toward full enrollment at current tuition rates for maximum tuition revenue, while paying a higher compensation for employees with grants from the Community Foundation. Additionally, a grant from
Early Learning Indiana helped increase infant and toddler seats in programs and drive up attendance and revenue during the first phase.
Higher pay quickly began to stabilize the workforce, reducing turnover and attracting more caretakers.
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Julie Garber, Vice President of Strategic Initiatives of the Community Foundation of Wabash County
“Bringing up wages at the same time to $15 per hour and higher made it possible to retain talented child care staff and not lose them to higher paying positions in the community,” explains Garber.
After six months of higher wages, programs will be required to raise rates to more fully cover the cost of child care by themselves. Knowing, however, that many moderate-income households will have difficulty paying higher rates, the Community Foundation is prepared to execute a second phase of the project to reduce costs for programs and families.
“Among the many supporters of Operation Change the Future, the finance and business sector has been an important partner, contributing to the initiative to stabilize the child care their employees need to remain at work,” Garber explains.
Child care in Wabash County got another boost in 2024 when the Community Foundation, working on behalf of the county’s two economic chambers, received
Indiana’s Employer-Sponsored Child Care Grant. The grant enables families who work for a business or industry that has membership in Grow Wabash County and Manchester Alive to receive a 50% discount on child care in a licensed center or registered ministry. Employees from more than 50 businesses are taking part, serving 160 children and 11 child care businesses.
The stabilization of child care promises to have an outsized effect on Wabash County. Children who have high-quality education as infants, toddlers, and preschoolers have been shown to benefit throughout life, according to studies such as the foundational Perry Preschool Study. Parents with access to reliable high-quality care can stay at work and support their families. Employers will use the availability of reliable child care to attract and retain employees and likely see greater productivity among staff. Whole communities benefit from the economic stabilization that child care brings to families. According to Nobel economist James Heckman, when communities have access to quality child care, they have higher rates of educational attainment, more participation in the local economy, less use of social services, and lower rates of encounters with law enforcement.
“We have a very generous community,” Garber says. “We presented leaders, industries, educators, financial institutions and individuals with a needs assessment and a plan forward that we have confidence will produce a high return on investment. Knowing the impact of child care on the success of their businesses, the community joined the effort. We’re in it together, for each other.”
Imagine Early Scholarships
Utilizing the Foundation’s grantmaking and fundraising abilities, the organization shines a light on education and the importance of students being prepared to complete a post-secondary credential. From this framework, the Foundation created the
Imagine Early Scholarship Program.
“What we realized is that very often, kids aren’t in our applicant pool for traditional scholarships,” Grant says. “Too often children and families decide early in public school that college isn’t for them. We
studied the science of children’s savings accounts (CSAs). We learned that when children know they have a college savings account at a very young age, it changes their expectation for educational attainment, changes their perception of the value of education, and it changes their engagement in school.”
Expanding upon traditional CSAs, Imagine Early provides merit-based educational scholarships which are deposited into students’ early award scholarship funds every nine weeks. Students earn these scholarships simply for completing their schoolwork and for making small deposits to their family-owned 529 savings account. Depending on stock market rates, Grant estimates these public school students could have up to $2,000 in scholarships to spend on educational programs after high school graduation.
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Students in grades 4-8 received recognition for the scholarships they earned a previous semester in school as part of their participation in the Early Award Scholarship Program.According to a report from the
University of Michigan, these funds have a positive impact on young students.
“We have some very remarkable results about the efficacy of the program,” Grant says, “to help kids have higher grades, an improved persistence rate, and higher test scores.”
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Students participating in the “Imagine My Future” event.
She considers this program “a crown jewel” of the Foundation.
“We’re very proud of the program,” Grant says. “We have nearly 2000 kids enrolled in the program who have in grades 4-8 received or are receiving scholarships.”
The program has had several name changes, initially called Promise Scholars, then Early Award Scholarships, and now is referred to as the Imagine Early Scholarship Program. Joanne Case, program director of the Imagine Early Scholarship Program, says the recent rebrand of the program name is to inspire students to imagine a future filled with opportunity.
“We wanted to tap into the importance of having assets early in life,” Case says. “Children and families who know they have assets can start to imagine a bright future – and now have a means to pursue it.”
She works closely with students and their families.
“I love seeing families catch the vision of how education can shape their future,” Case says. “Families feel the community’s embrace of their child. Parental expectations increase, as does the child’s level of engagement in school.”
Behind the scenes, there are many entities, foundations, and citizens putting in hard work to ensure they and their neighbors can have a bright community today and tomorrow. This deep care and commitment to the Wabash community is reflective of the people who live there.
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Joanne Case, Director of the Early Award Scholarship Program at the Community Foundation of Wabash CountyAlthough the work is hard, Case says seeing the positive impact on kids, their futures, and the community’s future, makes it all worthwhile.
“We don't have to wait a whole generation; we’re able to witness the fruits of our labors as the students grow up and move through the program: higher grades, better social-emotional health, and an increased rate of savings,” she explains. “The research shows these interim successes and gives us hope that students are going to make it in ‘the long game’ – meaning that more of them will complete vocational school or college and secure a prosperous life as an adult.”
Part of the long game is also to help encourage future residents to call Wabash County home.
“We’re really proud of the students who are earning Imagine Early scholarships and hope that the existence of the program invites people to consider settling down in a place where the community invests in children to this extent,” Case says.
Imagine One 85
When it comes to strategic development, most counties and cities typically have plans set in place. While some of them sit on shelves, collecting dust, this is not the case in Wabash County.
To become a more cohesive county, address population decline, and develop prosperity in Wabash County,
Imagine One 85 was launched. The plan is a culmination of ideas and concepts from five incorporated communities and the county as a whole.
Alex Downard, director of Imagine One 85, says their
comprehensive plan shows a real population decline. By 2050, estimates show that Wabash County could have 5,000 fewer residents than today. To attract and retain residents, employees and their families, this plan has 85 initiatives and actions in place to cultivate growth. A big part of that plan’s action steps are being done in part, by the Community Foundation.
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Alex Downard, director of Imagine One 85“Patty at the Community Foundation of Wabash County is very humble, and the foundation is one of our best-kept secrets,” Downard says. “It’s because of how humble Patty, the team, and the Board are. However, the impacts of the lives they’ve made on young people, adults …nobody would ever understand the breadth of that.”
Downard says the Community Foundation is now the largest charity foundation endowment per capita in the state of Indiana.
“That’s one thing that people in Wabash County and outside Wabash County don’t know, and should know,” he says. “Because of their reputation in the community, the Community Foundation has really positioned itself to be a leader not only for their own organization, but county-wide.”
Simply put, Imagine One 85 would not exist without the vision and support of the Community Foundation, Downard says. In working together with generational businesses, historic legacies, family endowment funds, and other organizations, their commitment showcases a hearty philanthropic community.
“Now more than ever in society, humans just need that connection,” Downard says. “They just need to know that people care. Whether it be those companies employing our people, or programs the Community Foundation offers, we’re showing we’ve created this, we want you, and we want to invest in you. We want to be known and are going to be known as the place that wants you here.”
This story was created in partnership with Visit Wabash County.