Page 36 - South Mississippi Living - January, 2025

36 | January 2025 www.smliving.net | SOUTH MISSISSIPPI Living
The Faces of
Gulf Coast Community Foundation
While playing a unique role throughout South Mississippi, the Gulf Coast Community Foundation attracts, manages, and distributes more than a million charitable dollars to improve the lives of people across the six coastal counties. Since 1989, the Foundation has given over $110 million in grants to help individuals, businesses, and nonprofit organizations support a variety of needs throughout Hancock, Harrison, Jackson, Pearl River, Stone, and George counties.
“Essentially, we partner with everybody,” said Foundation President and Executive Director Christen Duhé. “We are never a competition to other nonprofits,” she explained. “We try to enhance them and make what they do even better.”
Duhé added the Foundation’s projects change with the fluid needs of the communities. They have recently partnered with Back Bay Mission and the coastal United Ways to tackle homelessness and have supported animal welfare organizations with the Fixed For Life campaign that spayed and neutered more than a thousand cats and dogs at no charge to their owners.
Rodger Wilder, Foundation Founder and CEO