Thank you to our 2020 NASW Community Fund contributors

At the end of 2019, we established the NASW Community Fund to help colleagues-in-need attend our ScienceWriters annual meetings and other professional development opportunities. Our Community Fund creates an additional way for NASW members to give to our community goals. By growing our funding base, we can further sustain the grant programs necessary to meet ongoing and new areas of encouragement. Little did we know that 2020 would bring new and additional challenges for many.

Throughout the course of this difficult year, more than 140 contributors donated $6,330 to the new Community Fund. With your help, we were able to fund a record 36 grant requests for support to attend the virtual ScienceWriters2020 conference including registration fees, funds to offset caregiving costs, and subsidies for equipment purchase.

Thank you to our members, conference attendees, and supporters for nurturing a vibrant, diverse community of science writers.

Inspired? Consider making a gift to our NASW Community Fund to support future needs.

Thank you contributors

Alan S Brown
Ann Gibbons
Ashley Braun
Ben Young Landis
Carina Storrs
Catherine Dold
Chelsea Wald
Cynthia Graber
David Ehrenstein*
Elizabeth Culotta
Elizabeth Ladyzhets
Emily Sohn
Emily Underwood
Francesco Fiondella
From a slug
Jeremy Rumsey
Jill U. Adams*
Judy Cantrell
Juliet M. Beverly
Kathryn Jepsen*
Kendall Powell*
Kurt Riesselmann
Laura Helmuth*
Leila Belkora
Lila Guterman*
Lisa Munoz, SciComm
Lynne Lamberg*
Madeline Bodin
Matt Bille
Michael A. Fortune
Michael and Jennifer Cox*
Patricia Koning
Patty Dineen*
Robert Irion*
Ron Winslow
Sarah Zielinski
SciCommDiversity
Seth Mnookin*
Siri Carpenter*
Tinsley Davis*

and 76 generous contributors who chose to remain anonymous.

Thank you contributors and honorees

In honor of Alexandra Witze
In honor of A'ndrea Elyse Messer
In honor of caregivers everywhere juggling caretaking and work during COVID
In honor of Czerne Reid and Ashley Yeager for their leadership in supporting young science writers' growth and development
In honor of Dan Fagin
In honor of Dave Perlman
In honor of David Bricker
In memory of David Bricker
In memory of David Bricker
In honor of Donald John Blacklock
In the memory of Jeff Davis, English teacher extraordinaire
In honor of the many wonderful NASW volunteers
In honor of Peter Calamai
In honor of Siri Carpenter's amazing leadership
In honor of Terry Devitt

* More than one contribution in 2020.

NASW is a 501(c)(6) organization. As such, gifts are not tax-deductible. All gifts are designated in full for grant disbursement, with no fraction diverted to overhead. Gifts are not matched between specific donors and recipients; all gifts are aggregated within each fund and all grants are disbursed by NASW as issuer. The selection criteria, solicitation, applicant review, and award decisions for each grant are governed by the NASW committee(s) with responsibility for that fund (e.g. NASW Education Committee, NASW Diversity Committee). NASW committees are led by and entirely comprised of dues-paying NASW members in good standing. Committee members serve on a volunteer basis and are not compensated.

The objective of the Community Fund is to increase the overall fiscal capacity of NASW to offer professional development travel assistance, which would otherwise draw solely from the NASW general budget. Gifts to the Community Fund may be disbursed to any existing NASW travel program, including Undergraduate Travel Fellowships, Graduate Travel Fellowships, Professional Travel Fellowships, and Diversity Fellowships. Disbursements from the Community Fund will be made to the grant programs of the greatest need, as assigned by the NASW Board of Directors.

Other need-specific NASW funds may be created in the future. We welcome member input and committee volunteer service in developing these and other programmatic solutions to nurture our science writing profession.

Hero image by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash.