Don Manuel Presents

About our company

In his early 20s, he moved to Ithaca from Ohio by way of NYC. Like many young adults, he didn’t look at the world through a philanthropic lens, but had already acclimated to the culture shock that is the global population living in one community and sharing its roots with one another. Moving to Ithaca was like a baby NYC with the many diverse cultural backgrounds. In the summer of 2011, he began his first non-profit experience with No More Tears/ No Mas Lagrimas. He was asked to help provide entertainment for the first annual Boricua Afro Americano Parade and Festival on the downtown Ithaca Commons. Since that seed of philanthropy and community involvement was sown, he created Creating Dreams Movement that same year and was nominated to be a part of Natural Leaders Initiative at Cornell Cooperative Extension. He had the privilege of working with the Kettering Foundation in Ohio on deliberate democracy and how to make it work for all. He was briefly a Tompkins County Human Rights Commissioner. He worked with Get Your Greenback, Ithaca Food Justice Summit, and Streets Alive back in its beginning years, just to name a few. He had the honor of working with our Community Foundation in 2016 for the Spring grant cycle that was scheduled for $150k in grants. That number was almost doubled by the end of the grant cycle, and it was the largest grant cycle of its time due to the championing of many up-and-coming local organizations. He is humbled to join the board again for some amazing community work and look forward to learning more about our great team and the amazing organizations applying this year. As a husband, father, and grandfather, He feels it’s part of his duty here on earth to help leave it just a fraction better than we got here