A history of giving from the Heritage Harbor Foundation | Opinion
Ken Dooley is a board member of the Heritage Harbor Foundation.
The Heritage Harbor Foundation is the outgrowth of a movement that began in the 1980s to create Rhode Island's state history museum. Rhode Island is one of only four states without such an institution. A downturn in the economy and a change in the state's tax credit program doomed the history museum.
Patrick T. Conley created the Heritage Harbor Foundation from the ruins of the failed project at the Narragansett Electric Company with a corpus of $3.6 million invested with the Rhode Island Foundation. Since 2017, HHF has provided grants for projects or initiatives to increase familiarity with Rhode Island's history. In the past six years, HHF has made external grants to over 100 nonprofits, including:
Establishment of a World War II Memorial Park in Woonsocket with an eternal flame: $108,000.
Save The Bay was awarded $21,278 for creating a history of advocacy.
The Rhode Island Council on the Humanities received $20,000 for expanding "Rhode Tour," an application devoted to interpreting Rhode Island historic sites using smartphones and tables.
The Museum of Work and Culture was awarded $19,000 for purchasing a multitouch computer table.
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Major and minor external grants to over 100 nonprofits total $551,009. Internal grants include $451,377 to the Rhode Island Publications Society for over three dozen books and booklets on Rhode Island history distributed free to 108 local libraries and ethnic groups. This amount also represents creating and managing a 1,200-volume library of Rhode Island books donated by Conley and a research archive open to scholars.
Other in-house projects include the Rhode Island Fabre Line Immigration Exhibit, the annual May 29 Statehood Day observance conducted with the Pawtuxet Rangers, the categorizing of the 7,000-volume American History collection that Pat Conley donated to Newport’s Redwood Library, and a historical plaque program that dedicates plaques around Rhode Island at historical sites.
In addition to expenditures for grants and projects, the Foundation has acquired and renovated 5,300 square feet of space for its headquarters at 1445 Wampanoag Trail, East Providence. This mortgage-free facility includes offices, meeting rooms, a public lecture hall, a Rhode Island research library, and a photography studio. The Foundation also gives free meeting and office space to its associates, The Rhode Island Heritage Hall of Fame, and the Rhode Island Publications Society.
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To accomplish its tasks, the Foundation employs a part-time secretary, a facilities manager, a photographer, a librarian/archivist, a book designer, a copy editor, a proofreader, and an indexer. These operations are supervised voluntarily by Patrick T. Conley, the historian laureate, who also edits all of the books and booklets produced by the Rhode Island Publications Society, and he is also its most prolific author. In eight years under Conley's direction, the Foundation still has its original assets of approximately $3.6 million despite its many grants and acquisitions.
While covering Rhode Island's early history, the Foundation has shifted the focus to the state's more recent era by describing and explaining the heritage of Rhode Island's diverse ethnic groups and its long-neglected minority population. Through its many grants and books, it presents a comprehensive portrait of Rhode Island that will instill pride in its citizens.
This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Since 2017, the foundation has provided grants for projects or initiatives to increase familiarity with Rhode Island's history.
