Sugar Bush History
In 2006, when Garrett Boone, co-founder of The Container Store, retired and sold his ownership stake, Boone’s sister and brother-in-law, Mary Anne and Don Flournoy, received a windfall. The Flournoys were long standing faculty at OHIO, and active in the local non-profit and farming community. They thought about how to do good with the money—should they direct it toward the community that they loved so much, or toward the university that had given them such meaningful careers? Or what if they could bring those together by funding partnerships between the university and community? A community and university legal team created the vehicle, a supporting organization of the Ohio University Foundation, named after the Flournoy's farm—The Sugar Bush Foundation.
The Flournoys saw immense potential in university-community collaborations, but they also understood it was not always easy for the community non-profits and the university to work together—there was a big size and power difference. They sought to correct for these imbalances. Through the thought leadership of Mary Anne and her best friend, Rural Action Founder Carol Kuhre, the operating principle of “Joint Design” was born. Each project seeking funding from the Sugar Bush Foundation must have a university partner and a community non-profit partner with a plan for joint design and execution of projects.
The Flournoy’s, together with daughter Hylie Voss and son Eli, convened Carol Kuhre and other board directors, leaders drawn from the community and university, into a semi-autonomous governing body that would give gifts through the Ohio University Foundation to joint university-community projects located in Appalachian Ohio. The Sugar Bush Foundation Board hears proposals for funding annually and makes recommendations to the Ohio University Foundation Board for final approval and disbursement of funds.
In 2019, the Athens community mourned the passing of Mary Anne Flournoy, whose legacy of service lives on throughout the Southeastern Ohio region. The Flournoy family continues to lead the Sugar Bush Foundation with Don as Director Emeritus and daughter Hylie Voss now serving as President, with son Eli Flournoy and son-in-law Bruce Voss serving as family board directors together with eleven community directors. Granddaughters Annie and Kate Voss serve as a student directors.
By 2025, the Sugar Bush Foundation had given more than $4.8 million to university-community partnerships that restore the environment, strengthen local food systems and grow an interconnected, resilient economy, involving Ohio University students in every project.
