I was recently reminded of the old saying, “You can never step into the same river twice.” The river itself is constantly changing, even as the water keeps flowing on steadily.

Last year was a lot like that. It was a year in which almost everything seemed to change, and yet it did keep flowing and, perhaps more significantly, our community has begun to emerge with a strength and resilience of which we can all be proud.

Knox County Foundation certainly experienced its share of change last year, as did I. In July, we celebrated the retirement of Sam Barone who, as the only Executive Director the Foundation had ever known, provided extraordinary leadership, direction, and wisdom for nearly two decades. As part of that transition, I was humbled and privileged to be asked to step into this new role, and yet, like so many of us, I found myself in the middle of a global pandemic and a great deal of confusion and concern about what “normal” might even mean anymore.
Inside these pages, you will find details and a few stories of how Knox County Foundation not only continued to offer the same level of charitable investment in our communities as we always have but found creative ways to do even more.

Of note, our emergency COVID-19 relief funding helped support nonprofit organizations providing basic services to Knox County residents. When shutdowns and remote working and limited fundraising opportunities threatened many of these important services, these grants helped sustain our local nonprofits and their vital missions.

We also expanded our strategic economic development investments in the villages of Centerburg, Danville, Fredericktown, and Gambier. Each village now has a locally developed strategic plan and Knox County Foundation is committed to investing more than $1 million dollars toward these projects and programs over the next four years.

Perhaps most impressively, in spite of everything going on around us, the generosity of Knox County shone through. By every metric, 2020 was a year of growth and expansion for our organization, as we saw increases in donations, the number of new funds that were created, the size of endowed gifts we received throughout the year, which only ensures our ability to continue our work and do even more in the years ahead.

I do not know that any of us will ever quite be the same after 2020. I expect that most of us feel different now, perhaps in many different ways. But the river is still the river, despite its changes. And we are still Knox County. And we still retain that same character and fortitude that has sustained us for many years.

I hope you will enjoy looking through this Knox County Foundation Annual Report for 2020, a year unlike any other, and that it will remind you of how much we have to be grateful for and proud of despite changing circumstances.