STARKVILLE — The easiest place to invest is your own backyard. At least, that’s part of Stacey Parvin’s philosophy as the executive director of Starkville Community Foundation.
“Our lives are all connected, and when we can invest in our community, we all win,” Parvin said to the Starkville Rotary Club Monday at Hilton Garden Inn.
For roughly 20 years, Parvin said, the foundation was known as Starkville Oktibbeha Achieving Results (SOAR). But in April 2023, the nonprofit switched its name to further reflect its goal: raising funds for projects and programs throughout Oktibbeha County.
“We direct our funds into civic, educational and health and human services that improve everybody’s lives,” Parvin said. “… We add to it these cultural activities that y’all were talking about that make sure Starkville is so much fun, too. This ensures people are invested in making Starkville and Oktibbeha County the best place to live and work and raise a family and retire.”
Parvin said the foundation raises money through donations from individuals and businesses. It also receives donations from fundraising groups, like 100 People Who Care and Community of 1,000.
Funds raised are then redistributed back to the local community, Parvin said. For example, Starkville Community Foundation – an affiliate of the Tupelo-based CREATE Foundation – helped 100 Women Who Care, which typically raises about $25,000 annually, invest that money into local organizations like Starkville Strong, the J.L King Center, the Starkville Public Library and more.
One of the big projects Starkville Community Foundation contributed to in the past year, Parvin said, was resurfacing the community tennis courts at Starkville High School. The city, school district and Starkville Community Foundation each funded one-third of the renovation, which cost more than $90,000.
Starkville Community Foundation also helped to fund the September relaunch of Helping Hands of Oktibbeha County, a partnership with Starkville Strong and Trinity Presbyterian Church, Parvin said. The groups raised more than $66,000 in two years to go toward restarting the program, she said.
Each week, clients meet with Helping Hands volunteers to receive help with job skills and personal development, along with some financial support toward a utility bill or rent. Since the program restarted, Parvin said, volunteers have helped more than 40 families with resume development, job searches and other tools for their future successes.
While the Starkville Community Foundation has invested in the county in a variety of areas, Parvin said the nonprofit has more ideas for new grants in the upcoming year. One such idea is the Pardon our Progress Grant, a grant that would help small local businesses with offsetting losses and struggles they may encounter during the Main Street redesign project – a pedestrian-friendly redesign of the downtown area that should begin to roll out at the beginning of 2025.
“We want to figure out this year how to support our locally owned retail, food and personal care businesses during the important downtown renovations that are going on,” Parvin said. “I think everybody can agree our town needed infrastructure work … so now we want to make sure that our businesses don’t suffer too much.”
Parvin said the grants will provide supplemental income to businesses that participate in the foundation’s youth shadowing program, to both support the businesses while their parking is limited and to give local youth a job experience to add to their resumes.
“A lot of our youth don’t have anything to put on a resume,” Parvin said. “… So a business can give us a plan of how they would utilize a youth in their development. … This could be me just thinking, but while parking is an issue, maybe to run items out to a car, if it’s a restaurant or a shop. But it exposes kids to how you run a store.”
Besides helping direct grants toward projects and programs that deserve them, the Starkville Community Foundation also uses 4% of the interest earned from its endowed “Legacy Fund” each year to reinvest in partner agencies in the community.
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Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 47 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
