Community Foundation awards grant to Oswego marine museum to help with merger-related costs

OSWEGO — The Central New York Community Foundation and the Richard S. Shineman Foundation partnered to award a $20,000 strategic partnership grant to the H. Lee White Marine Museum in Oswego.

The marine museum will use the grant to assist with strategic planning, legal, accounting, and promotional costs associated with the nonprofit organization’s formal merger with the Oswego Maritime Foundation and the Oswego Maritime Alliance, according to a Community Foundation news release.

“This grant will not only help the museum continue through a formal merger process, but it will also help us develop our organization’s newly expanded mission to develop, enhance, interpret, and highlight educational activities and programs focused on Oswego’s waterfront,” Mercedes Niess, executive director of the H. Lee White Marine Museum, said in the release.

The newly merged organization said it plans to develop and expand its existing programs, which include junior sailing, floating classrooms, lecture series, and boat and model building. The museum also plans to develop new programs that highlight the history, preservation, and recreational use of the region’s waterfront for the benefit of the Greater Oswego community, the release noted.

“This merger will create a more effective structure for managing Oswego’s rich maritime history and delivering a broad spectrum of waterfront programs and services to the community,” John Eberle, vice president of grantmaking and community initiatives at the Community Foundation, said in the release. “Through this Strategic Partnership Grant, we hope to enable long-range plans and strategies for an all-encompassing maritime center in this region that has future expansion potential, both physically and organizationally.”

The Strategic Partnership Fund, formed by the Community Foundation, supports projects that reduce nonprofit operational expenses while working to enhance program delivery in the community, according to the release. Funded projects involve administrative consolidation or affiliations, joint programming, regionalization, subsidiary formation, or a full-scale merger among two or more nonprofits. Since the fund’s inception in 2009, more than $285,000 has been granted to help organizations streamline their operations. As of January 2013, a total of $4.8 million was reported to have been activated or saved as a result of those awarded partnerships, according to the Community Foundation. Additional information about the Strategic Partnership Fund, including how to apply for a grant, can be found at www.cnycf.org/partner.

Established in 1927, the Central New York Community Foundation says it is the largest charitable foundation in the region with assets of more than $143 million. It awarded $8.3 million in grants last year to nonprofit organizations and since its inception has invested more than $120 million in the community.

The Richard S. Shineman Foundation is a private foundation established in 2012 by the bequest of Richard S. Shineman, a tenured professor of chemistry at SUNY Oswego. Its vision is to become a “catalyst for change” across Central New York and, in particular, Oswego County.

Contact Carbonaro at mcarbonaro@cnybj.com