Giving Back: GZA's Community Service Grants for 2025

GZA demonstrates the firm’s core value of caring for our communities in multiple ways, including our annual Community Service Grant Program. It is open to employees actively involved in non-profit organizations who demonstrate their commitment to the non-profit’s cause and a compelling need for grant funds. 

Recently, employees who received 2024 grants shared details of the impact the GZA funding had on the organization with which they volunteer.

BIRD (Band Instrument Renewal Drive) of the Rhode Island Wind Ensemble
Rick Ecord, Chief Administrative Officer
 

Rick plays the clarinet in the Rhode Island Wind Ensemble (RIWE), serves as Treasurer of the RIWE Board of Directors, and is Co-Manager of the BIRD program. The benefits of music on child development are well established. The musicians started the BIRD initiative in 2022 with a goal to evaluate, repair, clean and donate instruments to school band programs —empowering young musicians, one instrument at a time. The GZA grant helped fund repairs to 30-40 instruments (including several donated by GZA colleagues). More than 50 schools have applied to receive refurbished instruments, with the teachers and students expressing their deep gratitude for the gift of music when an instrument is received.  Approximately 200 instruments, including brass, percussion, woodwinds, and a few string instruments have been gifted to students thus far. 

Do YOU have an instrument sitting in your attic that you would like to donate? 

For more information see https://www.riwe.org/bird or contact Richard.Ecord@GZA.com

Annual House Building Service Mission to Booneville, Kentucky
St. George-St. John Bosco Youth Groups
Chris Mayne, Corporate Safety

Chris has participated with his teenage children in this ten-day program for two years through local parishes. He is one of several adults participating in the mission trip, including driving the teens from Connecticut to rural Kentucky, where the parishes have partnered with the Appalachian community of Booneville for more than 40 years. This year, a group of 44 made the 14-hour drive. They helped construct porches, handicap ramps, and make interior renovations to improve living conditions. This area of the country is extremely economically disadvantaged. The money raised by the participants, including the GZA grant Chris received, is used to purchase materials for the building projects (bought on-site to support the local economy) and to pay local contractors for licensed trade work as needed.

Chris noted that the teens and adults participating in the work make strong connections to the community members they are helping, benefitting from the experience as much the residents.

Howell Nature Center
Tanya Simm, Administrative Assistant, Livonia

Tanya has volunteered at the Howell Nature Center in Howell, Michigan for approximately three years. It’s one of the largest rehab centers in Michigan, treating 2000-4000 injured animals each year and returning them to the wild. Tanya volunteers twice a month and works with some of the 70 animals who, for their own safety, cannot be returned to the wild for a variety of reasons. These animals depend on dedicated volunteers like Tanya to keep them happy, healthy, and socialized. She has spent most of her time with three birds whose broken wings have made them permanent residents of the center, including Harlen and Max, red-tailed hawks, and Ralph, a turkey vulture. The GZA grant was used for supplies for the animals.

Tanya has gotten to know each bird’s personality and finds it peaceful to be with them.  She also shared a little-known nature fact:  did you know that turkey vultures will vomit to scare predators away?

For more information, see:  https://www.howellnaturecenter.org/

The 2025 Community Service Grant awardees were also announced: 

• Covenant House Michigan—submitted by Christopher Merchant, Sustainability Assistant Project Manager, Livonia
• The Kita Center—submitted by Megan Murphy, Project Manager, Hooksett

A GZA Core Value

Care for our Communities:  We operate under charitable and sustainable principles as a positive and active member of the communities in which, and for which, we work.

GZA donates approximately $75,000 annually through its Charitable Giving and Community Service actions. In addition to the Community Service Grants program, these include: a charity match program for annual giving; donations to periodic campaigns such as natural disasters; office initiatives such as holiday gift programs, food drives and volunteer events; and corporate and local office donations.