Greenwood Education Foundation celebrates 10 years, adds executive director

The foundation’s impact can be felt across Greenwood Community Schools.

For a decade, the Greenwood Education Foundation has worked to support students, staff and the community at large. They’ve awarded about $500,000 through educational grants, scholarships and their GEF Cares initiative, which focuses on food, clothing and mental health needs.

Starting from humble beginnings in 2014, the GEF is readying for more. As the new school year begins, the GEF is marking its 10th year of existence by adding a full-time executive director to run its operations.

Tiffany Woods, a member of the foundation’s board since 2017, becomes the GEF’s first full-time executive director on Thursday. Woods, a Greenwood graduate, taught for 12 years at Isom Elementary before resigning and joining the GEF, serving as the board’s president for the last two years.

She joined GEF because she still wanted to be connected to the community and give back, she said. Since then, she has seen the foundation grow exponentially.

“So starting with my participation in 2017, seeing the foundation grow from that initial startup phase to recognizing where we are now — getting into the sustainability [of], growing our programs, offering additional services to our students — is really an incredible thing,” Woods said.

Many programs

GEF is an independent 501(c)3 nonprofit that serves the school system in “creative and innovative” educational opportunities that normally would not be funded through state and federal money, Woods said. They are separate from the school corporation and aim to supplement it, she said.

One way they do so is through their educational grants program. When the foundation began, they offered $15,000 in educational grants. Now they offer up to $55,000 in two grant cycles, one in the fall and one in the spring to any staff member, Woods said.

Grants include the Super Grant, a $ 5,000-themed grant for teachers to use creatively for their classrooms. Past themes include fine arts and mental health; this year’s theme is adventures — “Choose Your Own Ed-venture,” she said.

Last year, they launched a new teacher grant, offering educators up to $300 to use on anything they need to get their classroom up and running, Woods said.

One of the teachers to receive a grant was Tammy Honeycutt, a 6th-grade math teacher. She is in her fourth year of teaching but started as an instructional assistant at Greenwood 15 years ago.

Receiving the grant was overwhelming but wonderful, Honeycutt said. She used the grant to purchase games and programs to help enhance her students learning, she said.

“It’s just a great way to welcome teachers to Greenwood schools. It is a great way for new teachers to get started,” Honeycutt said.

The GEF also offers a Woodmen Way grant, which students and staff members can jointly apply for to enhance their environment. An example of this is funding for a club or after-school activity, Woods said.

Additionally, the foundation gives out student scholarships. Last month, the foundation paid out $22,500, she said.

During the pandemic, GEF realized how important the services were. It also opened their eyes to other services that were taken for granted, like the guidance department and student services, Woods said.

These realizations led to action: GEF Cares. The initiative focuses on providing food, clothing and mental health support to students.

“From 2022 on, we have really launched ourselves into the realm of student services,” Woods said. “Realizing that if a student is coming to school hungry, inadequately-clothed, in need of any kind of physical or emotional support, we need to be able to provide that so that that student can show up and learn in the classroom.”

The GEF also just finished a month-long effort to collect school supplies for students’ second-semester needs.

‘Amazing’ support

The community’s support of the foundation has been “amazing,” Woods said. When they started, it seemed as though people were unfamiliar with the concept of an education foundation, she said.

This is no longer the case for Greenwood.

“As time has gone on, we have had amazing donor retention and community participation because they’ve seen all that we’ve been able to do with a 100% volunteer board, and how directly we’ve been able to impact students,” Woods said.

The GEF and district administrators have a great relationship, Superintendent Terry Terhune said. He described the foundation as “fabulous,” as they’ve done everything to continue to support teachers and students while trying to find new ways to better support everyone, he said.

“It’s just been a good process and a good group of people that just really, really care about schools and want to see the best for everybody,” Terhune said.

Amy Jones, secretary of the foundation’s board, joined it six years ago, becoming part of their grants team, and later, its chair. The mother of three Greenwood graduates and one current student joined to support the district and give back, she said.

It’s been remarkable to see the foundation’s growth over the last decade, Jones said. This is especially true because it’s been all volunteer until now, with everyone having another job in addition to their GEF role, she said.

“It has been an absolutely amazing experience watching it go from a board, early on, when I joined it, that was largely doing small funds, like fundraising events to support the grant program, which has now grown into scholarship programs, and then our Cares team,” Jones said. “Our stretch and our capacity to impact the community and how the community has been defined has grown exponentially.”

Now the GEF is a “strong place” for resources for the community at large, not just with staff and students, Jones said.

Need for a director

When the GEF began in 2014 and was only doing $15,000 grants, it was manageable to operate with a volunteer base. But as they have grown, this became more difficult, Woods said.

With increasing grant and scholarship opportunities, along with new programs, an increasing need for donations and funding has arrived. At the same, GEF needs to ensure their programs are being implemented at a high level, Woods said.

Adding a full-time executive director ensures this, GEF members say.

GEF identified the need to have an executive director several years ago, recognizing that for long-term growth they would need a staff to do things beyond what a “working board” would do. They needed someone who was dedicated to being the voice of the foundation and tried to do it with part-time executive directors. But they quickly realized a part-time director was not sufficient, Jones said.

As the board met to discuss what the executive directors’ responsibilities would be and the needs of the foundation and the community, they realized they already had the perfect candidate.

“We were literally objectively listing what Tiffany does, what she’d been doing as our board president and what she was, all of the extra time and energy and the skill that she brings to the table, that was what we were trying to find in an executive director,” Jones said. “… She’s the person we need. She’s exactly who is made for this job.”

Woods is one of the board’s longest-serving members, starting as a teacher liaison before becoming its vice president, and later, president. After the pandemic, she was instrumental in establishing the GEF Cares program, Jones said.

Honeycutt is happy to see Woods named executive director, saying she was an excellent choice to lead the foundation. She had worked with Woods back when she taught at Isom, she said.

Looking ahead

As executive director, Woods hopes to continue to grow these relationships with students, staff and donors, along with relationships with alumni and the business community. It is the foundation’s job to engage alumni to see how they can give back to the community they graduated from, she said.

The GEF wants to continue to grow its current programming into the future. An example of this is their grant program, with foundation members envisioning how the grants could have a larger reach into the community, Jones said.

“It’s taking programs already in place, whether it’s grants or scholarships or Cares, growing those continuing to be excellent in those things, and then looking out in the long term at how we continue to continue to make an impact,” she said.

They are also looking at how an endowment could fit into their fundraising capacity as well, Jones said. Like Woods, Jones highlighted engaging alumni so they can be more included as well.

“It’s just continuing to push the edges of the dream and the vision in a realistic way that’s attainable, but also sustainable,” Jones said.

Woods hopes the community comes to their events and visits their website, greenwoodeducationfoundation.org, to see what they offer. If community members are interested in volunteering, they should reach out, she said.

“We really are a community organization, so the more community members we have at our fingertips, the better off we are together,” Woods said.