OCTOBER 10, 2018 (Columbia, S.C.) – The Hootie & the Blowfish Foundation announced its second annual multi-year grant cycle donations, granting a total of $90,000 over three years to three South Carolina charities that benefit child welfare and youth arts programs within the state. The three organizations and projects are as follows:

· Epworth Children’s Home: Epworth’s Family Care Center. Epworth’s Family Care Center is a disorder program which allows mothers and their children to stay together while receiving treatment as a whole family.
· Abbeville County School District: Putting Students First, One Beat at a Time. This program will assist the district’s schools with purchasing musical instruments for students who have an interest in band.
· Dillon School District Four: Stayin’ the Chorus. This program will send choral students to regional performances and competitions and help purchase music classroom materials.
These projects join the inaugural projects from the 2017 Hootie & the Blowfish Foundation grant cycle, which are entering their second year of funding: Carolina Youth Development Center, Growing Home Southeast, and Long Bay Symphonic Society.
Darius Rucker, Jim Sonefeld, Dean Felber and Mark Bryan embraced their fortuitous career with the communities that support them. To this end, the band members created an endowment that ensures their foundation will last into perpetuity providing financial support to charitable initiatives throughout South Carolina and beyond.
Since the endowment’s creation in 2000, the Hootie & the Blowfish Foundation has awarded more than $2.9 million in grants. These grants have impacted thousands of citizens by supporting the ongoing fight for an even playing field in educational funding and lending an encouraging hand to all those in need.
Hootie & the Blowfish established their donor-advised fund at Central Carolina Community Foundation, the Midlands’ center for philanthropy, to strengthen the Hootie & the Blowfish Foundation’s philanthropic efforts. The Community Foundation acts as a centralized point of contact for all grant requests and manages its grant administration, evaluation, outreach and distribution.

About Central Carolina
Community Foundation
Central Carolina Community Foundation, the Midlands’ center for philanthropy, is a nonprofit organization serving 11 counties in the Midlands by distributing grants and scholarships and linking the resources of donors, nonprofits and area leaders to communities in need. Major initiatives include the Midlands Gives online giving challenge, Connected Communities grants, On the Table, Powered by Central Carolina Community Foundation, the One SC Fund, the Best of Philanthropy Awards, annual scholarships, and more. For more information about the Foundation, visit www.yourfoundation.org or call 803.254.5601.