Ralph M. Serpe, Adams County Community Foundation president and CEO, was awarded the Excellence in Community Foundation Leadership Award recently from the Council on Foundations.
According to a release, the largest membership association for philanthropic foundations presented the annual Council Awards, an awards program for the philanthropic sector for more than 40 years.
This new award is presented to a leader of a community foundation that has demonstrated years of vision, leadership, impact and elevation of community philanthropy.
According to the council, the award recognizes Serpe’s impact in central Pennsylvania and draws attention to the foundation and nonprofit partners that are working daily to uplift the communities they serve in a challenging time.
“Council on Foundation awards are usually bestowed on the presidents or major national foundations: Naming someone from a small community foundation in a rural county is a significant departure and a nod to our state-wide advocacy work and local endowment building,” Serpe wrote in an email.
Serpe has shaped and led major policy changes, including changing Pennsylvania’s interstate succession laws to create a local, endowed and charitable option for the assets of Pennsylvanians who died without a will or family. In Maryland, he helped pass the Endow Maryland Tax Credit and began work on removing scholarship displacement: the practice of colleges reducing students’ financial aid by the amount of private scholarships, something he helped eliminate at public colleges in Pennsylvania. Ralph’s current legislative work includes advancing federal tax exemption for post-graduate scholarship awards and changing the charitable status of cemeteries so they can receive charitable grants.
At the Adams County Community Foundation, Serpe introduced a “forever gift” option to their annual give day allowing any donor, at any level, to contribute to a nonprofit’s endowed fund. Today, 114 nonprofits benefit from newly created designated endowment funds at the community foundation, including small, community-based nonprofits that were once excluded from endowments that now receive annual, predictable grants that strengthen their missions for the long term.
Since 2007, Serpe has led groups of community foundation peers in year-long exercises focused on building unrestricted assets, exchanging best practices and holding one another accountable for measurable progress, with more than 350 community foundations participating.