Longtime community leader Elaine Garver has been hired to join the staff of the Middletown Community Foundation in the newly-created position of development officer effective July 1, Community Foundation Executive Director T. Duane Gordon has announced.

“I have had the pleasure of getting to know Elaine quite well over the past several years through the Community Foundation’s relationship with Abilities First when she worked there and personally through her leadership in the Middletown Rotary Club,” Gordon said. “I cannot think of a better addition to our staff. Her dedication to our mission of making the greater Middletown area a better place to live has been evident in so much of her work throughout the community, and I know she will make an immeasurable contribution to that effort.”

Garver noted: “I am looking forward to my involvement with the Community Foundation.  Being involved and giving back to your community is one of the great rewards in life.  This opportunity will allow me to better understand the needs and work to meet those needs and strengthen all aspects of our communities.”

Her duties will primarily involve administering the Community Foundation’s annual Membership Campaign and rebuilding its endowment fund-raising efforts, which Gordon said have been greatly relaxed since its sole capital campaign raised $6 million in the mid-1980s. That funding allowed the Community Foundation to separate from a component of the United Way into an independent organization. He added that Garver will also assist in creation of a new Visioning Subcommittee of the Community Foundation’s Development and Long Range Planning Committee to help identify the greatest needs throughout the community and how the Community Foundation may best address them.

Garver has spent the past several months in the position of director of development and community relations at Hospice Care of Middletown.
Previously, she served for more than a decade as vice president of development and community relations at the Abilities First Foundation and prior to that 15 years at the then-Middletown Regional Hospital, including periods as director of patient relations, director of volunteer services and director of marketing. She began her career as a substitute teacher in Middletown City Schools, followed by several years as a pre-school teacher in Orts Nursery School in Monroe. Garver holds a bachelor’s of science in education from Miami University, where she majored in special needs education.

Her volunteer work in the greater Middletown area is extensive. She currently chairs the United Way of Greater Cincinnati-Middletown Area’s Women Living United initiative, which is raising funds to expand the Middletown Community Foundation’s chapter of Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library literacy program from within the borders of the Middletown City School District into the neighboring Monroe, Madison and Edgewood school districts.

She is also the immediate past president and a board member of the Middletown Rotary Club, a member of the Philanthropic Education Organization (PEO), a member of the United Way’s Middletown Action Council and a board member for the Monroe Historical Society, Butler County Educational Service Center and Monroe Area Community Foundation, which is an affiliate of the Middletown Community Foundation.

She and her husband, Donald, live in Monroe and have three grown daughters, Jody, Jenny and Janna, all of whom followed in their mother’s footsteps to become educators, and four grandchildren.

T. Duane Gordon
Executive Director
Middletown Community Foundation
36 Donham Plaza
Middletown, OH 45042
513-424-7369
Fax: 513-424-7555
dgordon@mcfoundation.org <mailto:dgordon@mcfoundation.org> www.mcfoundation.org <http://www.mcfoundation.org>

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