News & Stories
Supporting Equity and the Environment for Years to Come
Photo credit: Kathy Tuckerman
Image description: Kathy Tuckerman with short gray hair stands outdoors wearing a striped jacket and a T‑shirt featuring a floral design and silhouette artwork. A cityscape with trees, rooftops, and tall buildings appears in the background under a partly cloudy sky.
Can lighthouses lead someone to the Community Foundation? They certainly guided Kathy Tuckerman, one of our donor partners and a prolific local volunteer, to the Grand Traverse region. During a Michigan lighthouse tour with her family in the late 80s, Kathy fell in love with the area. Even though she lived over 1,200 miles away in the Dallas-Fort Worth area of Texas, she returned to vacation Up North year after year. She finally began calling Traverse City home in 2009.
“I decided when I retired I wasn’t going to stay in Texas,” Kathy recalled. “There’s such a great culture up here. It was just where I wanted to be.”
After retiring, Kathy began volunteering at a head-spinning number of local organizations: Friends of the Sleeping Bear Dunes, the State Theatre, Traverse City Tourism, National Writers Series, the League of Women Voters, and Traverse City Philharmonic, among others. She’d been an active donor to local causes for years and added the Community Foundation to her roster in 2016.
Community means everything to Kathy: “They say everything starts at the local level, and I appreciate the Community Foundation’s focus on local issues,” she explained. “It makes the place more welcoming to everybody.”
Initially, she was a monthly donor to the Opportunity Fund, and recently added a monthly donation to our Diversity Equity, and Inclusion Fund. This is part of Kathy’s efforts to make Traverse City a more welcome environment by giving everyone “a place at the table.” She was originally attracted to the Community Foundation because of our dedication to maintaining openness to diversity and expanding equitable access to regional resources.
One of the organizations Kathy has helped fund through her support of our Opportunity Fund is Before, During & After Incarceration, an organization helping formerly incarcerated people gain housing, transportation, and other forms of support after release. Monthly donations are part of Kathy’s strategy to provide our organization and other nonprofits with steady, predictable support.
“When you have a core group of people you can rely on for monthly funds, you have an easier time planning for the future,” Kathy said. “The places I donate to know the money is going to be there every month so they don’t have to scramble for support.”
Even before establishing monthly donations, Kathy made us a primary beneficiary of her estate. In the future, the Kathy M. Tuckerman Endowment will provide grants for our Endowment for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion; Friends of the Sleeping Bear Dunes; the Grand Traverse Regional Land Conservancy; freshwater conservation organizations; and the care of vulnerable populations, especially women and children experiencing homelessness.
“We’re a small, largely rural community, and I want to protect what we have here,” said Kathy. “I’m particularly driven to environmental conservation and making sure people have opportunities to thrive. That’s why I want my estate to benefit people right where I live.”
Kathy’s care for local people and places is making an impact for organizations that serve and celebrate inclusiveness, diverse peoples, and equitable access. With her legacy gift, her desire to protect vulnerable people and landscapes will persist far beyond her lifetime.
Writer: Jennifer DeMoss