Impacting lives: Arkansas Community Foundation
March 10-16, 2025
By Jay Edwards
A significant milestone was announced recently by Arkansas Community Foundation (ARCF) as they surpassed a half a billion dollars in grants to nonprofits since their inception in 1976.
We sat down with Heather Larkin, the Foundation’s president and CEO, for a conversation about the generosity of Arkansans and the role her organization plays with donors, nonprofits and individuals in counties all over the state, which have all been critical in getting ARCF to this point.
“I tell people here all the time that when individuals walk through our doors they are coming to do something good,” Larkin said. “Everyone has different views on how to do things but it’s always so interesting, and uplifting to see people wanting to do good in their community and the state.”
Larkin grew up in Charleston, Arkansas. Her father was from Lonoke and her mother from Oklahoma. They met in Ft. Smith when he was studying to be a pharmacist and she, a nurse. “They picked Charleston, Larkin said, “because they thought it would be a good place to raise a family.”
After graduating from Hendrix College in Conway, Heather went to work for Ernst and Young as a CPA. She did that for a few years before heading back to school to study tax law at UALR Law School. After passing the bar, she was working for tax attorney George Plastiras, who told her one day about a position that was open at Arkansas Community Foundation that he thought she would love, because she could use both her CPA and law backgrounds.
“George knew I didn’t want to practice law for a long length of time. But my first thought was, what in the world? I even pictured something like a community center, with a gym.”
(We probably should mention here that Heather was a four-sport athlete, one of which was basketball, at Hendrix and sits on their Hall of Honor, so her thinking of a gym doesn’t seem like a huge leap.)
“After I did some research on the Foundation I found it fascinating. I interviewed with Pat Lile, who was president and CEO then and remembered thinking it would be a fun place to work. The staff back then was around four people.”
Larkin joined the team in 1998 and was named president and CEO in January of 2008 when Lile retired.
“When I came on I thought, well, I’ll do that for a couple years,” Larkin says. “I was in my 20s, and I just don’t ever think you’re going to be somewhere forever, right? But I came on and Pat and I had a great run. We also had a lot of fun as we just started building the Foundation. And here I sit, 27 years later, and it’s just been the best job in the world. I get to work with wonderful people in all 75 counties.”
“The Foundation realized pretty quickly,” Larkin says, “in the early 80’s I think, that they could not be effective statewide with an office in Little Rock and a staff of one or two. I have to give Martha Ann Jones Norton from Texarkana a lot of credit here. She was in this position and really began thinking about becoming statewide and came up with the idea of forming a network we named affiliates. It works similarly to branch banking. Martha’s idea was that philanthropy, like so many things, is very localized. People want to do business with people they know. The idea was for local offices with local boards to become our grant-making arm. It should be the people who live in the community who should be deciding what is needed where and how to best invest there. So we began creating these branches, or affiliates, and today we have 29 of them around the state.”
Larkin says that most of the grants made by ARCF are Donor Directed. For example, someone comes to them and says, “I want to set up an endowment, in my mother’s name, for her church.” Other requests might be a charitable fund for community journalism, or animal welfare, or for grade-level reading programs. “We can help people do those things and they decide how involved they want to be,” Larkin says.
With Foundation Directed Funds grants are selected by Community Foundation staff and advisory committees to address the greatest needs. Examples on the Foundation side are the Food Security initiative and Literacy Early Childhood initiative, which have both been started on a state level.
“So being a community foundation, we make grants across the board, from animal welfare, the arts and food security, and both on our Foundation Directed and on our Donor Directed.”
One of the tools used to decide where the best use of money would be is the ARCF’s aspirearkansas.org.
“It’s an indicators report and is actually pretty wonderful,” Larkin says, “and is used by people around the state, including many reporters because it gives them county by county data on everything from smoking to grade level reading to teen pregnancy. So we use the data to drive our Foundation Directed grant making and our Foundation initiatives, because better information leads to better decision making.”
“It’s a good tool to help identify challenges that affect all 75 counties in the state, and that are actionable by average citizens who don’t have a ton of money but want to give.”
Grade level reading she mentions was the first initiative, which focuses on ensuring all Arkansas children reach grade-level reading proficiency by the end of third grade, a point believed among educators to be critical in a student’s success going forward.
“It’s the point when you go from learning to read to reading to learn,” Larkin says. “And if you can’t make that switch, you’re not going to learn.”
It’s a time in a child’s learning that is considered so vital that Larkin says some states have planned how many prison beds they would need in the future based on third grade reading levels.
“There is a direct correlation between not being able to read and not being able to be a functioning member of society,” she says. “We may not be able to have an impact on crime or poverty after certain levels but surely we can teach a child to read. That’s something where a one hundred dollar grant can really make a difference.”
One nonprofit Larkin mentioned where small amounts can make a big difference is the Imagination Library.
“It’s one of our favorites,” she says. “It was started by Dolly Parton. It’s amazing. Lots of science behind it. You sign kids up and they get a book a month until they’re five, starting as a newborn, so by the time they’re five, they have a personal library of 60 books.”
“We know that parents who read to their kids, those children statistically will do better, not only by third grade, but in life. And so, very simply, you can make a $25 grant to the Imagination Library and sign up a child. That can make a difference.”
The Foundation’s focus on childhood reading led to their second initiative, food insecurity, an area where Arkansas is ranked among the worst.
“One of the things we learned,” Larkin says, “when we were talking to educators and experts in the field on early childhood and reading was how many of these kids are hungry. And so we moved right into thinking how we get food, healthy food, in the hands of Arkansans, and primarily kids, who need it. Some of that is done through larger grants but a lot of them are for school backpack programs, sending kids home with food. And while we don’t make policy we completely support breakfast in school. Every child should have a breakfast.”
ARCF’s $509 million in grants have supported a wide range of other initiatives, bringing together passionate philanthropists with worthy nonprofits, along with statewide collaborations in the areas of education, health and wellness, economic development, arts and culture, animal welfare, long-term disaster recovery efforts and many others. From empowering students with scholarships to addressing hyper-local needs, these funds have touched the lives of countless Arkansans.
In 2026, Arkansas Community Foundation will celebrate its 50th anniversary with statewide, large-scale grantmaking, along with announcing new initiatives. As the Foundation looks to the future, it remains committed to partnering with individuals, families, and businesses to create a lasting legacy of giving and to address the ever-evolving needs of the state.
For more information visit the website at arcf.org.
Photo caption:
ARCF President and CEO Heather Larkin
