The Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation was originally founded as an affiliate of the New York Community Trust in 1987 before establishing itself as an independent entity in 1990.
Since 2016, the BTCF says its assets have grown from $130 million to almost $240 million under the leadership of Peter Taylor, as well as almost doubling its staff to 22 and its budget to $3.5 million.
Taylor, a Berkshire resident, says he’s stepping down to allow a new voice with fresh energy to take over the foundation while he pursues his next steps in the world of philanthropy and nonprofit management.
“We work with donors and nonprofits to strengthen communities across our region, and we do that in a number of ways using a number of different tools," he told WAMC. "We support donors in achieving their goals by setting up funds that support issues they care about, causes that matter to them, and then we offer grant programs to nonprofit organizations. We offer a very robust scholarship program to support students achieving their education goals, and so altogether, we manage 550 charitable funds that make about $17 million in grants and scholarships a year.”
The organization operates in Massachusetts, New York, and Connecticut, serving Berkshire County, Columbia County, and portions of Dutchess and Litchfield Counties.
“We have tight-knit communities where relationships matter," said Taylor. "We have abundant natural resources that enhance the quality of life and draw people to visit here. We've got world class art resources, cultural resources. We've got leadership that is inspired in this region, leadership at the municipal level, in terms of elected officials, leadership in our nonprofit organizations that are doing important work every day, and of course, leadership in our in our business community.”
Taylor says the region BTCF serves faces similar challenges across state and county lines, like the need for economic development and increasing access to affordable housing.
“Those challenges include making sure that there are pathways for education so students beginning in early childhood, families and kids, can see pathways to learn and grow through our public education system all the way through to the highest level of education they want to achieve," he said. "And so, how do we make sure that there's a continuum of high-quality education opportunities for our students?”
Beyond the broader regional needs BTCF has worked to address, it also has specific undertakings geared toward the unique demands of each community.
“One of the priorities that we have had in Berkshire County is, how can we work with our cultural organizations, our arts-based organizations that share a goal in fostering community engagement through arts in the creative process?" Taylor told WAMC. "Obviously, our art resources attract both people within the county and outside the county, but our research showed that there were gaps in participation, especially among year-round residents, our growing communities of color, and young people, and so we've been working over the last six years in partnership with the Barr Foundation and our arts and culture sector to increase engagement through arts and the creative process. And so, we've done that by supporting innovative new approaches, new collaborations between and among arts organizations, providing resources for arts organizations to really look at their internal capabilities to engage our growing diverse communities across the region.”
In New York, Taylor says one of the projects he’s most proud of involved working with an anonymous donor couple in Columbia County eager to increase food access in the community.
“They saw that too many residents, their neighbors, were not accessing that rich array of nutritious food that was available and often was being exported from Columbia County," he explained. "And so, they wanted to increase access to fresh and healthy food, and they did that in a number of ways over a five-year period. It was a $750,000 commitment towards that goal that resulted in the establishment of a neat organization now that operates in Hudson across Columbia County called Rolling Grocer 19, which is a really cool program that was incubated at Hawthorne Valley, and they also worked to really support nutrition education and culinary skills among low-income kids in particular.”
Taylor says his successor will have to continue to ensure that the foundation is serving every member of the communities it works in.
“How can we center equity and inclusion in our work, both internal to the foundation in terms of how we operate, but also external, in terms of how we're able to serve communities, and especially our growing communities of color, which is such an important strength to this region,” he said.
Looking back over his tenure, Taylor says the BTCF’s work during the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak in 2020 brought out the best in the community.
“So many organizations stepped up and did everything that they could to help provide relief and to help with recovery of those hardest hit by the pandemic," he told WAMC. "It was an extraordinary effort across our region that really built off of that deep affinity and that sense of collective action that's here.”
