The Indianapolis-based Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust has announced grants totaling $1.9 million to twenty-one organizations in Indiana, including $437,500 to organizations working to assist families with basic needs such as health care, employment, and food.

The trust extended its Emergency Funding Initiative for a second year with a $300,000 grant to the United Way of Central Indiana's Community Economic Relief Fund, which has helped more than six thousand households facing economic hardships since its inception in December 2008. In addition, the trust awarded $274,000 to environmental programs and to support services for abandoned animals.

Nearly half the first-quarter grant amount, some $860,000, was awarded to elementary and secondary education programs, including afterschool, literacy, mentoring, and children's advocacy and protection initiatives. "With shrinking federal and state budgets impacting education and children," said Pulliam Charitable Trust president and CEO Harriet M. Ivey, "nonprofit organizations have to look elsewhere for funding."