Our Story

The Amherst Community Foundation was born out of a little frustration. Amherst had plenty of good ideas and people willing to support them. We just needed a better way to tap into that generosity and help fund the things our community cared about.

The idea took shape in 2014. Nancy McMillian was Amherst’s Recreation Director at the time, and Travis Warren was serving on the Recreation Commission. From those seats, they were surrounded by parents, coaches, volunteers and residents with ideas for making the community better. The challenge was how to turn that energy into action. Nancy began wondering whether there could be another path, one that would allow people to organize around an idea, build support, raise money and help make it happen themselves.

Nancy and Travis began exploring what a community foundation might look like, including attending a workshop in Massachusetts to learn how other communities had approached it. The earliest conversations naturally centered on recreation, but as the first group of volunteers came together, the idea quickly grew. Rick Katzenberg, Mia Balsama and Alec Bucannan, in particular, pushed for a bigger tent. Amherst was full of people passionate about education, culture, the environment, wellness, history and countless other things that make a community a better place to live. Why limit what we could help make possible?

That broader vision became the Amherst Community Foundation.

A Vehicle for Good Ideas

Over the years, we’ve learned that helping make things happen can take many forms. Sometimes it means raising money. Other times it means connecting people, finding volunteers, bringing organizations together or simply helping a good idea get off the ground. ACF has become a vehicle that can go wherever the community needs it most.

Different people have grabbed the wheel at different times. Angela Hornor brought extraordinary energy to an ambitious community match that helped make the new turf field at Souhegan High School possible. Lisa Kaveney helped lead the work around what became Joshua’s Park. Paul and Sue Spiess rallied community support for the Meetinghouse restoration. Kris McCool and Debbie Farrow helped hold down the fort through the COVID years. Along the way, many others have stepped forward around benches, scholarships, the Fourth of July, the Holiday Tree and other projects.

More recently, when a group of residents set out to create The Amherst Bear, ACF provided the nonprofit and fundraising infrastructure that gave the new community newspaper a place to get started. When The Bear was ready to become an independent nonprofit of its own, we happily watched it go.

ACF remains a 100% volunteer organization, shaped by the people willing to step forward and the needs and opportunities in front of them. People come and go. Projects begin and end. The Foundation remains, ready for the next person with an idea and the energy to do something about it.

More than a decade later, that same spirit still drives ACF. We believe some of the best things in a community happen when people decide to step up and make something happen.

ACF is here to help them do it.