Mission Statement
The mission statement of The Sheehan Family Foundation is to protect our environment and to enhance the quality of education. Our focus is on projects in eastern Massachusetts.
Areas of Giving
Education
Our Foundation's contributions are targeted to programs and organizations serving underpriviledged youth and families. The thrust is to support programs and organizations that enhance cognitive and social skills for educational success.
Environment
More than 75 properties in Southeastern Massachusetts have benefitted from the Foundation's efforts. It's approach has been to connect local conservation groups to each other in an effort to scale-up effectiveness. While Director of the Plymouth chapter of the Nature Conservancy, Robb Johnson, said that this approach has “Freed up the attention of all the groups to focus on results - not worrying about who got the credit.”
Programs and Impact
Education
Boys & Girls Clubs
For over a decade The Sheehan Family Foundation has supported local Boys & Girls Clubs on the South Shore of Massachusetts, recently donating funds for the construction of new facilities in Plymouth, MA and Marshfield, MA.
Raising A Reader
Through family participation, the Raising a Reader program teaches early childhood reading as a way to put children on a path to enjoyable reading throughout their school careers. The Foundation now lent its support for three years running for the programs in Brockton and Everett, MA.
Environment
The Trustees of Reservations (TTOR)
For five years, the Sheehan Family Foundation supported the Trustees of Reservations. They're a non-profit organization seeking to preserve scenic, historic or ecologically significant spaces in Massachusetts for the public's enjoyment.
Wildlands Trust of Southeastern Massachusetts
A non-profit conservation organization that strives to protect and manage both private and public lands, the group implements sustainable land-use policies across Southeastern Massachusetts. Our Foundation has been a supporter of Wildlands Trust for a decade.
The Nature Conservancy
Since 2012, The Sheehan Family Foundation has supported this leading non-profit land conservation organization. The Nature Conservancy has lead environmental protection projects across the United States and 35 countries, including land rescue projects in Southeastern Massachusetts.
Jones River Watershed Alliance
The Sheehan Family Foundation has supported the Alliance, a member-funded, non-profit organization, for over ten years. Through advocacy, land protection, habitat restoration and improvements to the watershed infrastructure, The Jones River Watershed Association seeks to protect and improve the Jones River watershed in Kingston, Massachusetts.
Quotes
Margaret Sheehan, a founder of the Sheehan Family Foundation, enjoying the great oudoors!
Margaret Sheehan on her father, Chairman Jerry Sheehan:
“He imparted to us this love for nature that came particularly from his own love of plants.”
Henry Woolsey, Director of the Mass Natural Heritage Program:
"The Sheehan’s interest in science-based land protections and their investment in those groups has paid remarkable dividends to nature conservation and to future generations."
Karen Grey, Executive Director of the Wildlands Trust of Southeastern Massachusetts:
"The entire region would look very different if the Sheehans hadn’t stepped forward. It would be more suburbanized, there would be fewer places for rural pursuits […] and less of each town’s special character."
Stephen Smith, Executive Director of the Southeastern Regional Planning and Economic Development District (SRPEDD):
"The conservation groups funded by the Sheehan Family Foundation did an amazing job of raising awareness among residents and community officials in the region. They were the Paul Reveres, alerting us to the threat posed to our natural resources and the character of our communities."
Pine Dubois, Executive Director of the Jones River Watershed Association:
"Their grants have been essential to our efforts to improve water quality and quantity and to creating a corridor of protected, publicly accessible land along the river. None of that would have happened without the Sheehan’s regular generosity and on-going engagement."
Contributions by Distributors and Employees
Team Brew Crew Takes on the Pan Mass Challenge
L. Knife & Son
In August of 2014, 10 L. Knife and Son company employees and associates went on a 190 mile bike ride from Sturbridge to Provincetown Massachusetts to help raise money to fight cancer. Sponsored by our brewing partners, the Sheehan Family Foundation, L. Knife and Son, Inc., and others, Team Brew Crew raised over $80,000 for the ride. Over the past 8 years, Team Brew Crew has raised over $300,000 for the Pan Mass Challenge, which donates to the Jimmy Fund for the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
Dana-Farber's Jimmy Fund Clinic remains one of the world's premier centers for pediatric cancer research and treatment. It has been integral to the success of treatment for once-incurable childhood cancers. Survival rates of acute lymphocytic leukemia (ALL), the most common type of leukemia in children, have improved steadily in the past 40 years. In the 1970s, five-year survival for children younger than 20 was 61 percent, and today has climbed to 83 percent. Since 1988 two out of every three children who enter the Jimmy Fund Clinic are cured.
The PMC is one of the most successful fundraising event in terms of the money raised and the percentage of funds it contributes directly to charity. It raises more money for charity than any other single athletic fundraising event in the country. Since 1980, PMC riders have raised $414 million, crucial funds that have improved the lives of cancer patients and their loved ones around the globe. And in 2013, for the seventh consecutive year, 100 percent of all funds raised by riders went directly to the Jimmy Fund. Not one dollar raised by riders sweat and determination was used for administrative and organizational expenses. The PMC is a model of fundraising efficiency.
The PMC’s success is the result of the positive energy that forms and grows when people come together to work as a unified force toward a common goal. Everyone knows someone who has been affected by cancer. One-in-four of us will face our own challenges with the disease during the course of our lives. The PMC is a way for the healthy to fight for the ill, and for all of us to invest in the future cure. By participating in the PMC, Team Brew Crew and L. Knife and Son, Inc. are helping to fight cancer.
Colorado Flood Relief
L. Knife & Son
The L. Knife & Son Companies are extremely proud to work hand-in-hand with the residents and brewers of Colorado. In a continued effort to lend a helping hand during difficult times, the Sheehan Family Companies announced a donation to Colorado flood relief efforts for every case of Colorado beer that sold in October in 2013. The donations were distributed between the Red Cross of Colorado, Oskar Blues’ Can’d Aid Foundation, and the Left Hand Foundation. We are proud to partner with the following Colorado breweries: Avery Brewing, Boulder Beer, Breckenridge Brewery, Crazy Mountain Brewery, Gravity Brewing, Great Divide Brewing, Left Hand Brewing, New Belgium Brewing, New Plant Beer, Oskar Blues Brewery, Redstone Meadery, Ska Brewing, and Tommyknocker Brewery.
