Dear Partners,

GAR Foundation has proudly invested over $230 million to promote quality of life, education, vibrancy, and economic opportunities in the Greater Akron community since 1967.  GAR exists today because of the vision of our founders, Galen and Ruth Roush, to serve and invest in others to impact communities, families, and individuals. What the Roushes began long ago, we continue through careful stewardship of investments in our community.

As we approach our 50^th anniversary, we decided it was the right time to embark on the journey of a logo and website redesign to better describe visually how we’ve evolved as a foundation, and to provide the highest quality experience for our grantees and community partners.

We engaged ipso Creative, a boutique web agency in Akron to guide us through the process. We reflected on the old logo and website and asked: What is it missing? How well does it represent us today? How can we better serve as a resource to our community? And what’s up with people calling us ɡär?

The result was a simple, clean, and contemporary take on a traditional logo, reflecting our growth over the last five decades. The slashes between the letters indicate that our name is an acronym for our founders, Galen and Ruth, and is pronounced je-a-är, not gar like the fish. (Nothing against garfish, they’re pretty cool).

After five years, it was time to press the refresh button on our website.  Throughout the duration of this project, we lovingly referred it as our baby. Countless hours went into research, planning, and development of the website. After dozens of creative meetings, emails, and thinking about it in our sleep more times than we’d like to admit, we’re extremely thrilled with the end result.

The new site better tells the story of our values and vision, it provides our nonprofit partners with seamless access to our application process, in addition to tools and resources that allow them to do what they do best. It also brings our blog and updates to the forefront – an area where we post articles, letters, links, and thoughtful posts in an effort to help to get to know us better. It’s a place where we celebrate the success stories of our partners, articulate the issues that inform our strategies, and address pressing questions and community challenges.

While the specifics of our grants have evolved over the last half century, and will continue to change in the upcoming year, the lesson that our founders have taught us remains the same: it’s not about the transaction, it’s about the experience. We believe long-lasting impact happens in communities, families, and individuals when they are invested in and given opportunities to flourish.

We hope you will take a moment to look around the new site and join us in celebrating this exciting moment in GAR’s history.

Sincerely,

The GAR team