The Golden LEAF Foundation is a nonprofit corporation based in Rocky Mount, North Carolina in the United States, that was created in 1999 to receive half of the funds coming to North Carolina from the master settlement agreement with cigarette manufacturers. The foundation is now devoted to advancing the economic well being of North Carolinians and to transforming its economy. It works in partnership with local governments, educational institutions, economic development organizations and other public agencies, and nonprofits to achieve this goal.
The foundation uses the funds for projects that show the most potential for strengthening North Carolina's long-term economy, especially in communities that have been tobacco-dependent, economically distressed and rural communities. Golden LEAF's grantmaking, estimated at $10 million per year, has been focused in the areas of agriculture, economic development and workforce preparedness. Educational assistance projects that complemented these priority areas also have been supported.
The foundation's 15-member board is appointed by the governor of North Carolina, the president pro tem of the state senate, and the speaker of the North Carolina House. The Golden LEAF Foundation's economic development efforts include an economic stimulus package, a biotech initiative, and, most recently, an aerospace alliance initiative.
Read more about Golden LEAF Foundation: Select Projects, Tobacco Settlement
Famous quotes containing the words golden, leaf and/or foundation:
“Two thousand summers have imparted to the monuments of Grecian literature, as to her marbles, only a maturer golden and autumnal tint, for they have carried their own serene and celestial atmosphere into all lands to protect them against the corrosion of time.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I leaf through books, I do not study them. What I retain of them is something I no longer recognize as anyone else’s.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)
“But I hate things all fiction ... there should always be some foundation of fact for the most airy fabric—and pure invention is but the talent of a liar.”
—GGeorge Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)