Awards of Achievement
In September 2011, The Frist Foundation awarded $105,000 to organizations that best exemplify improvement and achievement in nonprofit management through its Award of Achievement program. Winners in each of three categories received $20,000 unrestricted grants, and two finalists in each category received grants of $7,500 apiece. The categories and grant recipients are listed below. Winners from 2010 can be viewed on video by clicking here:
- Innovation in Action: The winner in this category was Big Brother Big Sisters of Middle Tennessee, recognized for an innovative program that tapped parents' ideas to improve the agency's mentoring relationships. The two finalists in the category were Martha O'Bryan Center, which set up a successful academic support program on the top floor of Stratford High School, and Saddle Up!, which dealt with its perennial waiting lists by taking on provisional riders to get a taste of the program while remaining on the list.
- Making a Difference: The winner was Martha O'Bryan Center, which developed a comprehensive parent-education program called Tied Together. Finalists in this category were Thistle Farms, a social enterprise program through which former prostitutes from Magdalene House develop job skills, and The Contributor, a newspaper sold by some 400 homeless people to help sustain themselves.
- Team Building: Nashville CARES was the winner for its broad-based HIV screening program. Finalists were Hands on Nashville, which managed the efforts of more than 25,000 volunteers cleaning up after Nashville's historic floods in 2010, and The Coalition for Healthy Aging, for its utilization of multiple employees and volunteers to do health outreach to vulnerable people.
The awards were initiated to encourage and recognize outstanding nonprofit management. Since then, the program has attracted more than 500 nominations from Nashville nonprofit organizations.
The Center for Nonprofit Management (CNM) has administered the awards program since 1993. More information is available on their website at http://www.cnm.org