BRAF unveils 2012 Barton Award winners

Michael Manning, Keith Ouchley and Michael Tipton are each receiving $10,000 from the Baton Rouge Area Foundation as recipients of the 2012 John W. Barton Sr. Excellence in Nonprofit Management Award. Manning is president and CEO of the Greater Baton Rouge Food Bank. Under his leadership since 2004, BRAF says, the nonprofit’s capacity to feed people has grown 60%. With nearly $12 million raised in a capital campaign, the food bank is retrofitting a warehouse to expand capacity and increase efficiency. Ouchley is executive director of The Nature Conservancy of Louisiana, which has preserved thousands of acres of land in the state. In Morehouse Parish, the conservancy has removed levees to reconnect the Ouachita River with a 25-acre plan, hoping that the experiment produces new forest land while reducing nutrients that flow into the Gulf of Mexico and create a dead zone. Tipton is executive director of Teach for America–South Louisiana. In his five years as chief, he has seen local funding for TFA grow from $600,000 to $2.5 million annually, BRAF says. Now in its 11th year, the awards are named as a tribute to Barton, who led a group that created BRAF in 1964. Barton died earlier this month at the age of 95. Read a Business Report article on his achievements and passing here.