Wheelhouse Creative client spotlight: Community Foundation for the Ohio Valley (CFOV)

Wheelhouse Creative is not only proud of our marketing work, but also happy working with the quality of people and businesses with which we work.
A shining example is the Community Foundation for the Ohio Valley (CFOV), a nonprofit organization created to facilitate philanthropy in the Upper Ohio Valley region.
The CFOV works in grants and scholarships. It employs long-term investment strategies to protect charitable funds. It, well, just does a bunch of good for our community.
Allow Susie Nelson, Executive Director since 2007, to help explain.
“The (CFOV is one of more than 900 community foundations across the United States,” she said. “Community Foundations are 501.c.3 charitable organizations that work in a specific, defined geographic area with a mission to facilitate philanthropy. A simplified way to understand community foundations is to compare them to modern-day crowdfunding programs. Community foundations have many donors who create individual funds for the greater good.”
Susie said the CFOV was established in 1972 by a group of prominent local businessmen who heard about a community foundation being started in Charleston, WV. The first CFOV fund was a scholarship for the Ohio County Fraternal Order of Police Association -– a fund that’s still held and managed today. The CFOV service area includes Hancock, Brooke, Ohio, Marshall, Wetzel and Tyler counties in West Virginia and Belmont and Jefferson counties in Ohio.
“Since its founding, CFOV has grown to more than 300 individual charitable funds and more than $96 million in assets,” she said. “We work with donors of all types to help them achieve their charitable goals. We offer different types of funds: Scholarships, Donor Advised Funds, Donor Designated Funds, Agency Endowments, Unrestricted Funds, and Special Project Funds. Many times, donors leave a portion of their estate to CFOV to leave their legacy on the community in a way that is important to them. We work closely with professional advisors –- accountants, lawyers, trust officers and financial advisors — to help them create a charitable plan for their clients.”
You can see why Wheelhouse is proud to work with CFOV. The foundation has many competitive grant programs for a variety of causes. For instance, the Community Impact Fund is a grant program that’s open to all eight counties. Other competitive grant programs include the River Valley Health Foundation, Stealey Community Fund, Belmont County Enrichment Fund, the Women’s Giving Circle, and the Barth Charitable Trust. They also work with Expand Energy (formerly SWN) to make minigrants into classrooms for STEM programming.
“All combined, the community foundation makes more than $4 million in grants and scholarships every year into the Upper Ohio Valley,” said Susie. “This amount grows annually as more donors learn about the benefits of partnering with CFOV to reach their charitable goals.”
Great stuff, Susie. And Wheelhouse Creative is proud to be helping.