Over the last 18 months, nonprofit Beverly Bootstraps has navigated the most challenging times Executive Director Sue Gabriel has seen in her nearly 30 years as a nonprofit leader. “How often do you have to manage an organization when someone’s life could be at risk?”...

Gift of Real Estate Fuels Family Philanthropy THE AHERN FAMILY CHARITABLE TRUST By Michelle Xiarhos Curran When the Ahern family decided to sell their 90-year-old commercial painting business, there was one major asset left: the commercial property located in downtown...

When Warren Waugh and Bud Lyon opened BMW of Peabody in 1994, they made a pact. “We both agreed that we would give back to the community,” said Waugh. “It’s a way of communicating who we are and what we believe in.” Lyon passed away in 2012, but that original agreement, made by two business partners nearly 30 years ago, has endured. Today, Lyon-Waugh Auto Group supports a multitude of charitable causes and nonprofit organizations right here in Essex County – and beyond. And Essex County Community Foundation is proud to have been chosen as the corporation’s philanthropic partner in this work. ECCF is now home to two Lyon-Waugh philanthropic funds that help the collection of luxury auto dealerships streamline their corporate giving.

As Hurricane Harvey made landfall in Texas and Louisiana in August of 2017, the apples in Michelle and Ben Langille’s small backyard orchard in Manchester, Massachusetts, were just beginning to ripen. Hearing about the devastation left behind by the storm, the Langilles’ two elementary-aged children got an idea. They would pick and sell the apples to raise money to help the thousands of people suffering in Harvey’s aftermath. They set up a stand on the sidewalk in front of their house and called their philanthropic business: The Crabby Apple: Apples for a Cause, and encouraged passersby to take an apple and leave a donation.

The Pelican Intervention Fund, founded in 2015 by Newburyport residents Kim and Steven Keene and Elizabeth McCarthy, is a grassroots organization created to help men and women struggling with addiction – most notably heroin addiction. An epidemic nearly everywhere, Essex County has been particularly hard hit by the opioid crisis. According to ECCF’s Impact Essex County data, admissions to drug treatment programs for heroin addiction in Essex County have surged 60 percent since 2005.

Linda and Jurg Siegenthaler have had a longtime passion for the city of Lawrence. “When I left the city, it was struggling,” said Linda, who grew up in the Tower Hill neighborhood. “Now there’s a lot of effort to bring it back and I want to be a part of that.”

On September 18, 2009, Mayor Michael Sullivan partnered with the Charles C. Pringle Foundation to establish a fund at ECCF to provide a mechanism that could respond rapidly to urgent needs during times of emergency.

In 1868, Civil War veteran H.K. Webster founded a small feed grain operation in Lawrence. In the 1980s, under the leadership of H.K.’s great-grandsons Dean and King Webster, the company reached its zenith as a manufacturer and distributor of Blue Seal Feeds in the Northeast.

When she was a girl, Elizabeth Shorts Harrigan would visit her father’s childhood home and property in Bellevue, WA, a lush seven acres filled with the rhododendrons her grandfather planted and tended for years.