Feb 4, 2021
Photo provided
The Parkersburg Area Community Foundation gave meals to staff and clients of local agencies working to aid persons recovering from substance use disorders.
Given the ongoing pandemic, the 58th Annual Meeting of the Parkersburg Area Community Foundation and Regional Affiliates (PACF) was held by “Zoom call” recently Jan. 15.
A week later, on Jan. 22, its usual “fourth Friday in January” Annual Meeting date, instead of the meal shared among its supporters, the PACF provided meals for staff and clients of local agencies working to aid persons recovering from substance use disorders, serving children in emergency and foster care, and responding to the public’s health needs.
Feb 4, 2021
In lieu of its traditional large-scale in-person Annual Meeting, the Parkersburg Area Community Foundation & Regional Affiliates recently held its Annual Meeting virtually Jan. 15 which featured a “State of the State” address from its Executive Director, Judy Sjostedt Ritchie.
Sjostedt Ritchie noted that 2021 marked the 22nd Annual Meeting that she has had the privilege of conducting. The PACF’s grantmaking capacity has grown significantly over its history. In 1964, one year after the PACF’s founding, the Foundation awarded $2,000 in community grants.
By contrast, at the end of its 2020 fiscal year, the PACF awarded $2.9 million in grants and scholarships.
“As a public charity, anything and everything that the PACF can do is directly to the credit of the generous local citizens who support it,” said Sjostedt Ritchie.
$15 Million bequest made to Parkersburg Area Community Foundation wvnews.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from wvnews.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Dec 15, 2020
Mary M. “Mickey” Welch had a plan. She has been gone for more than a year now, but that plan is just coming to fruition, and all of Wood County is the better for her efforts.
Welch’s $15 million bequest to the Parkersburg Area Community Foundation will become a permanent charitable fund, particularly serving those needs that were of most concern to her during her life.
“My mother loved her community. It was part of her family,” said Mary Anne Ketelsen, her daughter and fund adviser to the foundation. “She cared about improving life here for those most vulnerable children, youth, special needs individuals and animals. She liked helping organizations that help people to help themselves and that enable families to build a better life.”
The Parkersburg Area Community Foundation has received a $15 million bequest from a late Parkersburg businesswoman.
Calling her a “remarkable woman,” the major gift from the late Mary M. “Mickey” Welch, who died in August 2019, is the largest in the history of the 57-year-old foundation, said Judy Sjostedt Ritchie, executive director of the foundation.
“It’s been said ‘Some people leave footprints on our hearts and we are never, ever the same, ” Sjostedt Ritchie said. “Mary M. “Mickey” Welch left footprints on the hearts of countless people throughout the Mid-Ohio Valley and elsewhere.”
Welch was a successful owner of numerous businesses and was steadfast in her support of her community with “a boundless concern for others’ well-being,” Sjostedt Ritchie said.