Corey Moline and his team at Arkansas Community Foundation were in some ways on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic when it first hit in March 2020, and meeting the challenges of the health crisis is one of his biggest career achievements.
First, the foundation had to prepare for the majority of the 15 workers in its Little Rock office to work remotely. And then it had to prepare for its “key role in receiving and then distributing funds to many of the nonprofit organizations in the state that were providing frontline relief efforts once the pandemic hit Arkansas,” Moline said.
“We were able to establish safe practices to allow key personnel to come to the office each day to manage the large number of charitable gifts we received that were earmarked for the relief effort, and then turn them around and push those dollars back out of the door.”
The gifts started coming in March 17, 2020, and the first grants started going out April 1, 2020. More than $3.5 million came to the foundation for immediate pandemic relief, and it made 800 grants in a couple of stages of the initial crisis.
“Some of these nonprofits needed money immediately,” he said, citing food banks in particular. “Our finance team didn’t miss a beat,” said Moline, who has been at the foundation since 2014.
In addition, Moline, a 1995 accounting graduate of the University of Central Arkansas in Conway, has in the last year led the foundation’s transition from its more than 20-year-old enterprise computing system to a new, more functional system. “The program we selected enables our donors to have a better experience,” he said.
Asked what he learned about himself from the pandemic, Moline said, “how much I rely on other people,” adding, “It was a blessing to be surrounded by such good people that I admire.”
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