29 May Goss to serve as National Grant Reviewer
Becky Goss, president and CEO of the McPherson County Community Foundation (MCCF), has been invited to serve as a grant reviewer for the 2025 J.M.K. Innovation Prize, a prestigious national program administered by the J.M. Kaplan Fund.
The fund awards 10 prizes, each including a $150,000 cash grant and $25,000 in technical assistance. Participation as a reviewer is by invitation only and is seen as a rare opportunity to engage with bold, early-stage projects in the fields of heritage conservation, the environment, and social justice.
The J.M. Kaplan Fund was founded in 1945 by Jacob Merrill Kaplan following the sale of his business, Welch’s Grape Juice Company. For more than three generations, the fund has remained a strong force in philanthropy. Its current focus areas include the environment, heritage conservation, and social justice.
Launched in 2015, the Innovation Prize supports social entrepreneurs working to address some of society’s most urgent challenges. The prize is awarded every two years and receives more than 3,200 applications nationwide. In the first round, more than 500 reviewers evaluate submissions. The top applications then advance to a review committee of 30 experts. Fifteen finalists are selected, and 10 ultimately receive the prize.
One notable past recipient is Wikitongues, a New York-based nonprofit that won in 2021. The organization is dedicated to preserving the world’s linguistic diversity, over 3,000 languages are at risk of extinction within the next generation, according to co-founder Daniel Bögre.
Wikitongues maintains an open-source platform where speakers and cultural leaders can submit videos, oral histories, and other materials to help preserve their languages. One of its standout contributors, Jacqueline Brixey, a citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, has built a dataset of more than 300,000 Choctaw words, along with a chatbot and speech-to-text software to aid in revitalization efforts. According to Wikitongues fewer than 7,000 people are considered native speakers of the language.
Goss said she’s honored to be part of the review process and sees it as valuable experience for MCCF.
“This opportunity is brilliant for (MCCF),” Goss said. “It gives us a look at how large organizations approach grant review, and hopefully inspires new ideas to expand and innovate our own process.”
For more information on the J.M. Kaplan Fund and the Innovation Prize, [click here]