Community Newsmaker: Jane Kraft
Experience lets volunteer help Corydon area community

Monday, May 2, 2005

Courier Journal

By Christopher Hall
Special to The Courier-Journal

When Jane Kraft moved to the Corydon area in 1989, she started getting involved with volunteer work as a way to get to know people in her new home.

Now, Kraft is being praised for her volunteer work with several organizations, and she was recently elected president of the board of directors of the Harrison County Community Foundation.

"When I first got to Harrison County, I just wanted to start meeting people, but then I just couldn't seem to stop," she said. "I love it. I really love this community. It's a great community."

Kraft, the first female president of the foundation's board, also is chairwoman of the board of Blue River Services, an agency that helps people who have developmental and other disabilities.

And she is on the boards of Southern Indiana Women in Philanthropy and the Harrison Education and Literacy Program. She is a former president of the Rotary Club of Corydon, and she also has been a member of the Harrison County Metro United Way Advisory Board and Community Investment Cabinet.

Kraft, who had been on the community foundation's board since 2000, was elected its president in December, and she began her one-year term in January.

Her goal as president, she said, is simple: to help the foundation continue serving the community. The foundation awards grants to agencies throughout Harrison County, including $2 million that helped start the Harrison County YMCA, she said, and $5 million to the Harrison County Hospital for a new building.

The foundation also has given money to schools, an animal shelter and other nonprofit agencies, and it has helped finance Little League baseball parks, she said.

"Our mission is to serve the people of Harrison County, and they have to tell us how they want to do that -- and that's what's so great about it," she said. "It's fun to find out what they think is important. I love it because we are there to serve the community."

Steve Gilliland, executive director of the foundation, said Kraft brings "vast experience working with nonprofits" and is known for speaking her mind -- which can put off some but is appreciated by most.

"She's just extremely community-minded," he said.

Kraft, who works from home doing medical transcription for the hospital, is a native of New Albany. She also lived in Evansville and Louisville and graduated from Waggener High School in St. Matthews, Ky.

Several years after briefly attending Eastern Kentucky University, she returned to school. She earned a bachelor's degree in psychology from the University of Louisville in 1972 and a master's degree in rehabilitation counseling from the University of Kentucky in 1974.

She has two sons, Charlie, 23, who is a student at Indiana University Southeast, and Nicholas, 25, who is a doctoral candidate in computer science at Clemson University in South Carolina.

She and her then-husband bought land in Harrison County near Corydon and moved there from Texas in 1989.

"I just really fell in love with it," she said of the area.

As for the community foundation, it gives people and agencies the chance to make good things happen, she said.

"We do a lot of good. … It's basically an organization that helps people, that makes their dreams come true," she said. "If they have dreams that we can make come true, then that's wonderful."