The Council on Foundations has announced Tara McKenzie Sandercock, senior vice president of grants and community partnerships at the Community Foundation of Greater Greensboro, as the winner of the 2021 Distinguished Service Award, and the General Service Foundation as the recipient of the Robert W. Scrivner Award for Creative Grantmaking.

Established in 1984, the Distinguished Service Award honors an individual whose leadership and integrity have deeply impacted the field of philanthropy by helping to advance the greater good. Sandercock, who has spent three decades in the field, was recognized for tackling pervasive socioeconomic issues and building trusting relationships in philanthropy and facilitating more than a dozen funding collaboratives focused on HIV/AIDS, capacity building for Latinx-led nonprofits, funding for LGBTQ-serving organizations, educational attainment, workforce development, and social capital research. She also is a founding member of Hispanics in Philanthropy.

“I am truly humbled to receive the Distinguished Service Award and all it represents,” said Sandercock. “Throughout my career, I’ve strived to guarantee that everyone in the Greater Greensboro area and beyond has a seat at the table. It is an honor to share in this recognition with my colleagues and partner organizations.”

Established in 1984 in honor of the late Robert Winston Scrivner, the Scrivner Award for Creative Grantmaking honors an innovative grantmaker who, with a combination of vision, principle, and personal commitment, has made a critical difference in a creative way. The General Service Foundation was recognized for its commitment, under the leadership of executive director Dimple Abichandani, to empowering grantees by replacing written grant reports with phone calls, streamlining the application process, and providing multiyear general operating support.

“We are so honored to receive this award,” said Abichandani. “Many of the grantmaking ‘best practices’ in our sector, like labor-intensive narrative reports, are just default habits, ripe for revisiting and reimagining. In this urgent moment, funders can increase our impact by aligning the ‘how’ of our grantmaking with our values, so that we are centering our grantees and shifting power to them.”