Photo by Eric Ayres Susie Nelson, executive director of the Community Foundation for the Ohio Valley, speaks to members of the Rotary Club of Wheeling on Tuesday, providing an update on the many programs the organization facilitates.

WHEELING — The Community Foundation for the Ohio Valley has grown over the decades to become a regional facilitator for philanthropic endeavors, impacting the lives of countless individuals in the area through its work.

Susie Nelson, executive director for the Community Foundation, on Tuesday gave members of the Rotary Club of Wheeling an update on the efforts of the nonprofit charitable organization that has spearheaded a myriad of successful programs.

Nelson noted that the Community Foundation serves six counties in the Northern Panhandle of West Virginia — including Hancock, Brooke, Ohio, Marshall, Wetzel and Tyler counties, as well as two counties in Ohio — Belmont and Jefferson.

“So it’s a big service area for a very small staff,” Nelson said. “We have a full-time staff of seven people.”

The staff includes Nelson as the executive director along with two program officers, a director of donor services, an office manager, a director of finance and a new communications specialist.

“Right now we have more than 300 individual charitable funds that we manage,” Nelson said. “Our finances are not quite done, but I believe that we just surpassed $90 million in assets. We’re still considered a small Community Foundation — there are much larger Community Foundations across the country, and there are some smaller ones, too. When I started with the Community Foundation in 2007, we had $24 million in assets, so that was shortly after the Community Foundation had actual paid staff.”

The Community Foundation for the Ohio Valley was first formed in 1972 and initially relied heavily on volunteers. Today, the organization promotes community generosity and manages an array of charitable funds, grant programs, scholarships and more. Nelson said it can be a “high-stress” challenge — working to keep all of the donors, partners, nonprofit agencies and board members happy, but noted that it was a very fun and rewarding job, as well.

Nelson noted that they were very proud of the fact that the Community Foundation for the Ohio Valley was confirmed to be in compliance with National Standards for Community Foundations.

In order to obtain this seal, the organization is peer reviewed against best practices to verify that it meets 26 different national standards for certification.

There are a number of different ways individuals, families, corporations, nonprofits and other organizations can get involved with the Community Foundation’s efforts. The easiest way is to donate to the Community Impact Fund, according to Nelson.

“That is our one unrestricted fund that we make grants out of to all eight counties in the region,” she said, noting that about $70,000 is distributed annually from that pool of money. “It is not a very big fund, but it is the fund that we’re most known for.”

Donors can start their own funds — such as donor designated funds, or leave something via a bequest for the organization to manage and support in the future.

“Whatever they have left over, they may want to leave to the Community Foundation to manage and to support either for a specific nonprofit organizations that they cared about during their lifetime or to a specific field of interest,” Nelson explained. “We can manage those on a field-of-interest basis.”

The Community Foundation also manages mini-grants for a number of programs and oftentimes partners with private foundations for specific funding opportunities.

In recent years, the city of Wheeling partnered with the Community Foundation, which helped distribute a portion of the city’s allocation of federal pandemic relief money from the American Rescue Plan Act to local nonprofits. More recently, the Community Foundation helped bring dozens of local agencies to the table to collectively take on one of the city’s most high-profile challenges.

“We were asked to facilitate a meeting among the organizations in the city of Wheeling that serve the homeless,” Nelson said. “We’ve had a couple of meetings. We’ve got a long way to go and a long list of things to do, so that work continues.”

To find out more about the work of the Community Foundation for the Ohio Valley, visit cfov.org or call 304-242-3144.