Mary would be proud.
A team from the Community Foundation of Broward on Nov. 14 joined with other local volunteers to help build affordably priced homes for hardworking families at a new neighborhood that Mary Porter’s bold estate gift made possible.
Splashed with paint and covered in caulk, the Community Foundation volunteers helped put the finishing touches on some of the newest homes at Habitat for Humanity’s largest ever Broward building project.
When completed, A Rick Case Habitat Community in Pompano Beach will include 77 reduced-price homes that enable low-income residents to get a fresh start in safe, quality homes that they help build.
A $1 million grant from the Mary N. Porter Legacy Fund has jump-started construction of this new neighborhood. The support from Mary’s Fund is paying for water and sewer lines, electrical lines, roads and other infrastructure. Her grant is also helping pour the foundations for 50 homes there.
The Community Foundation volunteers helping build homes this week saw evidence of Mary’s enduring legacy throughout the new neighborhood – from her name on signs welcoming each homeowner, to a statue of Mary as a child in a new playground at the neighborhood.
Mary’s gift and our team’s recent volunteer work are a continuation of a more than 30-year collaboration between the Community Foundation and Habitat for Humanity. A Community Foundation grant helped build Habitat for Humanity of Broward’s first home. And when the coronavirus pandemic hit, the Community Foundation provided an $88,200 emergency grant to help Habitat for Humanity provide much-needed counseling, mortgage relief and emergency assistance to local families impacted by the crisis.
In a county where about half of our workforce was already living paycheck to paycheck, this economic crisis has pushed many Broward families to the brink of economic despair. Support for affordable housing is one of the ways Foundation Fundholders tackle Economic Independence – philanthropy that empowers families to move from struggling to thriving.
Thanks to philanthropists like Mary with endowed charitable Funds at the Community Foundation, we will be there to help more Broward families achieve Economic Independence – during this crisis and beyond.
To learn more about creating an endowed charitable Fund, contact Vice President of Philanthropic Services Nancy Thies at nthies@cfbroward.org or 954-761-9503.
