David M. and Gail H. Grant Family Fund

This Fund was started and is being built by Founding Board Member David M. Grant and his wife, Gail, as a donor advised fund to support their various community activities and as a means to involve their sons in philanthropy.

David J. Grant and his brother Michael have been raised to give back to their community. Since they were kids they would do such things as accompany their parents to serve Thanksgiving dinner to the homeless before sitting down to their own family celebration. Now, as young adults, they're beginning to volunteer on their own, and are getting encouragement from their father, David M. Grant, and their mother, Gail, who have established an endowment fund with the Valley Community Foundation that they foresee their sons managing.

"I wanted to do this for my sons as a way to get them involved," says the elder Grant, who began his own volunteering at an older age when Jack Ribas, who runs the Boys and Girls Club of the lower Naugatuck Valley, asked him to become a Board Member.

"I had my eyes opened," says the a?able Grant, who has run a successful catering business in the Valley since 1974. "Before I joined the Boys and Girls Club in 1986, I really didn't do much with regard to charitable causes because I was so busy building my business. But when I did, I saw the need, and experienced the satisfaction of being in- volved. I thought that this Fund would not only be a way to give back to the community but would be something my sons could do together through the years."

The David M. and Gail H. Grant Fund was established in January 2005 with an initial $2,500 contribution and a pledge of the same for the next three years to build it to a minimum of $10,000. The Grants will meet once a year to determine how to best allocate the interest, giving ?rst preference to youth, perhaps by funding camperships or programs in the arts, says Grant.

"I hope it brings my sons closer together," says Grant, who intends to grow the fund over time. "And in 30, no, 50 years, when Mom and Dad are gone, they'll work at it knowing that it 's something their father and mother wanted. And hopefully, it will grow with them, and them with it."