Stern Family Fund

Stern Family Fund

Amy and Gary Stern established the Stern Family Fund as a donor-advised project of the Rockland Community Foundation, formalizing years of philanthropic involvement in New York's lower Hudson Valley. The fund's principal wealth origin traces to Amy Stern's three-decade tenure as CEO of United Hospice, a nonprofit where she oversaw end-of-life care operations, alongside Gary Stern's career as a journalist for The Journal News, where he covers Rockland and Westchester communities. The Sterns maintain a family residence on the Jersey Shore. The fund directs grants exclusively to 501(c)(3) organizations serving Rockland County, concentrating on community growth, health, and wellness initiatives. Its grantmaking posture is responsive and place-based rather than strategic in the venture-philanthropy sense — typical of a community-foundation-hosted donor fund — and includes recurring support for United Hospice, reflecting the founder's operational background. While specific grantees beyond United Hospice are not publicly catalogued, the fund's embedded position within the Rockland Community Foundation suggests distributions flow toward established local institutions rather than new programmatic startups. The Stern Family Fund operates with no dedicated investment staff or separate office, relying instead on the Rockland Community Foundation's administrative and investment infrastructure. Amy Stern's induction into the Rockland Women's Hall of Fame in 2018 and her active membership in the Rockland Business Women's Network signal sustained regional influence. No recent grantmaking data or operational changes have been publicly reported. The fund's structural distinction lies in its pure localism — a single-county geographic mandate paired with a generalist health-and-community remit, making it a tight feedback loop between one family's experience in Rockland County institutional life and the nonprofits that serve that same community. Unlike national donor-advised fund platforms, the Sterns chose a community foundation vehicle that anchors their giving to the place where the wealth was built.