In honor of Veterans Day, the Council would like to applaud the many philanthropic funders for their work to help military veterans and families access essential services and connect with their communities.  We would like to give a shout out to these Council members working with veterans’ advocates and their communities to create sensible strategies that work for veterans and their families:

• Bristol-Myers Squibb Foundation
• California Community Foundation
• Community Foundation in Jacksonville
• The Dallas Foundation
• Gulf Coast Community Foundation
• Lincoln Community Foundation
• The Miami Foundation
• Permian Basin Area Foundation
• San Antonio Area Foundation

At the 2011 Fall Conference for Community Foundations, the Lincoln Community Foundation released a Veteran Support Initiative report that outlines a community based model to meet the needs of service members and their families. Visit the Lincoln Community Foundation website for additional military resources.

On the government front, we would also like to highlight some recent federal veterans’ initiatives and announcements that might be of interest to the philanthropic community.

• Corporation for National and Community Service just launched VetCorps in partnership with the National Guard Bureau. VetCorps is a unique program to help returning veterans and their families access the critical services and support they need – ranging from social, mental and physical health services to housing and employment assistance – by recruiting them to serve as AmeriCorps and AmeriCorps VISTA members.
• Department of Labor has a new partnership with Microsoft to provide no-cost training and certifications to veterans in California, Florida, Texas, Virginia and Washington communities.
• Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) announced 13 new awards in the agency’s 2010 Industry Innovation Competition. The new projects will give VA an opportunity to evaluate new ways to enhance care and benefits for veterans. On Thursday, November 10^th, VA organized a successful online career fair that included more than 60 military-friendly national employers from both the private and federal sectors and more than 36,000 veterans. VA is also partnering with Google to design a specific job search engine for veterans.
• The White House unveiled a new slate of veterans hiring initiatives, including personalized career counseling and a job-search site for veterans.

If you have a partnership with your community on veterans’ services, tell us what your foundation is doing to serve those who served. Create a Partnership Profile to share how your foundation has partnered with public agencies to support veterans or email us at partnership@cof.org.

To learn more about this emerging community of practice with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs or other federal government agencies, please contact the Council on Foundations’ Public Philanthropic Partnerships Initiative team at partnership@cof.org.