Ralph Serpe

Ralph Serpe, Adams County Community Foundation President and CEO, won the Excellence in Community Foundation Leadership Award from the The Council on Foundations. The award is presented to a leader of a community foundation demonstrating years of vision, leadership, impact, and elevation of community philanthropy.

Serpe, a 1985 SUNY Fredonia graduate, has relentlessly championed community philanthropy with uncommon vision, courage, and effectiveness across four community foundations.

He has shaped and led major policy changes, including changing Pennsylvania’s interstate succession laws to create a local, endowed, charitable option for the assets of Pennsylvanians who died without a will or family. In Maryland, he helped pass the Endow Maryland Tax Credit and began work on removing scholarship displacement – the practice of colleges reducing students’ financial aid by the amount of private scholarships, something he helped eliminate at public colleges in Pennsylvania. Serpe’s current legislative work includes advancing federal tax exemption for post-graduate scholarship awards and changing the charitable status of cemeteries so they can receive charitable grants.

At the Adams County Community Foundation, Serpe introduced a “forever gift” option to their annual give day allowing any donor, at any level, to contribute to a nonprofit’s endowed fund. Today, 114 nonprofits benefit from newly created designated endowment funds at the community foundation, including small, community-based nonprofits that were once excluded from endowments that now receive annual, predictable grants that strengthen their missions for the long term.

Since 2007, he has led groups of community foundation peers in year-long exercises focused on building unrestricted assets, exchanging best practices, and holding one another accountable for measurable progress, with more than 350 community foundations participating.