The Grace Foundation

Katy O’Connor Smiechowski, a broker sales associate at Terrie O’Connor Realtors’ Allendale office, has a straightforward explanation for her family-owned company’s commitment to community service. “It’s in our blood,” she says.

The daughter of a “Navy brat” – her mother Terrie O’Connor, founder and broker-owner of the company – and granddaughter of a submarine captain, Katy credits role models in her family for the example they set. “They centered their lives around service, whether it was military service or any other ventures that interested them,” she says. “We grew up with that example and followed in their footsteps.”

A mother of four, Katy is active in the communities where she lives and works and serves as a board member of the Grace Foundation of Terrie O’Connor Real Estate Companies, established in 2019 to organize the company’s longstanding efforts to serve local communities.

“We’ve always been generous to local community projects and the Grace Foundation is a culmination of our efforts,” says Terrie. “It will provide a better structure for our company to support the organizations we’ve always supported as well as others that are important to our agents and our company.”

The Grace Foundation’s stated mission is to “identify local, legitimate and worthy areas of need for the agents, staff and clients of Terrie O’Connor Realtors to invest in for the ongoing betterment of our local communities and the people who live here, by providing financial, educational and manpower support and encouragement to families and individuals directly and through other local and proper charitable organizations.”

Efforts to organize and raise funds were affected in 2020 due to COVID-19, but the foundation was able to mobilize resources to assist the following organizations: Saint Peter’s Haven, Center for Food Action, Butler Church of the Nazarene, Holy Name Medical Center for Villa Marie Claire, Upper Saddle River Cares, Northern Highlands Sports Association, First Team Robotics, and City of Chicopee, Council on Aging. The company also sold Terrie O’Connor Realtors facemasks to raise money for the foundation and is in the process of creating a cookbook that will also raise funds. The foundation looks forward to scheduling a golf outing and other live events when circumstances allow in 2021.

The Grace Foundation’s Board of Directors includes Terrie and her children, Katy, Matthew and Joseph, as well as Meg Muldowney (finance manager, Terrie O’Connor Realtors) and Sarah Drennan (executive vice president, Terrie O’Connor Realtors).

“We’re not a large-scale foundation,” says Katy. “The money we raise stays within our local communities and helps local schools, food banks and hospices. We make sure it gets right in the hands of people in need.”

Terrie adds, “We don’t have megabucks, but we make the most of what we have. The Grace Foundation gives us a chance to be even more effective.”

Terrie O’Connor Realtors sales professionals are active participants in events involving the Grace Foundation of Terrie O’Connor Real Estate Companies that benefit the communities where they live and work. Clockwise, Terrie O’Connor Realtors agents collected hundreds of pounds of non-perishables for St. Peter’s Haven in Clifton and volunteered to stock the shelves with their donations, participated in the 2019 Executive Sleepout at Covenant House in Newark, packed Thanksgiving dinners for families in need at the company’s Family Thanksgiving Event at St. Peter’s Haven, and delivered food to St. Peter’s Haven during a drop-off that included agents Sal Cozzupoli and Hugh McGrinder III.