“STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — Philanthropists Lois and Richard Nicotra gathered Wednesday at the COMMONS Café in Bloomfield to distribute $84,539 in funding to 61 grant and scholarship recipients.
And for the first time, the Nicotra Foundation presented the COMMONS Café employees each with $100 American Express gift cards so they could become philanthropists as well and “Pay It Forward” to a community organization of their choice.“
“Our COMMONS Café team works daily to promote our mission to ‘Eat Good, Do Good’ and we hope to empower our café employees with this gift card to ‘share the LOVE’ with a nonprofit group, someone in need, or use it to purchase an item that would benefit a person or group in our community,” said Lois Nicotra.“