To the Editor:

As board members of Fairfield County’s Community Foundation (FCCF), we are writing to express our gratitude to seven outstanding Newtown nonprofits for their work during the COVID-19 crisis.

FCCF’s COVID-19 Resiliency Fund awarded these Newtown nonprofits grant funding: Children’s Adventure Center; Friends of Newtown Community Center; Newtown Youth and Family Services; Town of Newtown Department of Human Services; Reach Western Connecticut; Real Food Share; and Resiliency Center of Newtown. All these organizations played essential and distinct roles in Newtown’s response.

FCCF launched the Fairfield County COVID-19 Resiliency Fund on March 18th to support frontline nonprofits. Nearly $2.5 million has been raised from donors throughout Fairfield County, and we were able to deploy this funding quickly to support nonprofits noted above. To date, more than $1.9 million has been distributed to 154 local nonprofit organizations, reaching more than 260,000 of our region’s most vulnerable residents — that’s a quarter of the entire population of Fairfield County!

We have been very impressed with the way our region’s nonprofits immediately pivoted in response to this public health crisis, and we are honored to support their necessary work.

We are indeed lucky to have such a robust nonprofit sector here in Fairfield County.

Mark Riser, Board Member, FCCF

36 Perry Lane, Ridgefield

Briggs Tobin, Board Chair, FCCF

35 Downesbury Court, Ridgefield July 27, 2020