Steuben County Community Foundation

Steuben County Community Foundation

Founded in 1991, Steuben County Community Foundation remains the only community foundation serving the county, operating from Angola under CEO Jennifer Danic, who joined in 2011 and holds a Master of Arts in Philanthropic Studies from Indiana University. The foundation’s structure as a public, nonprofit grantmaker means its corpus is an amalgam of donor-advised, scholarship, and field-of-interest funds, not a single-family’s wealth. Grants flow to Steuben County nonprofits and scholarships go to local students; the foundation also serves as a vehicle for institutional funders. The Lilly Endowment’s GIFT initiative (Giving Indiana Funds for Tomorrow) is a major partner, matching local dollars and supporting capacity-building. Program focus spans education, parks and recreation, workforce development, and immediate needs, with named community partners that include Trine University, YMCA of Steuben County, and the Steuben County Economic Development Corporation. Geographic footprint is exclusively Steuben County, Indiana. The foundation reports seven staff, led by Danic with a senior team including Vice President of Programs Lisa Biers and a board drawn from local employers like Miller Poultry, Cameron Hospital, and Trine University. It maintains endowed funds such as the Sheets Family Park Endowment and the Spirit of Community Fund, and participates in professional networks like the Indiana Philanthropy Alliance and the Council on Foundations. May 2024: No dated operational event from the last 24 months is verifiable in public sources. Its structural differentiator is a single-county geographic mandate without competition — there is no other community foundation serving Steuben County. This grants monopoly attention from local donors who want hyper-local impact and from Indiana’s statewide funders, who need a reliable counterparty for place-based programming.