The late Stan Krempp of Jasper, IN, started the United Cabinet Foundation to support two areas he saw as underserved, the arts and religious institutions. When his daughter, Jeanne Campbell, who advises the fund with her sister, Martha Beckman, learned about Saint Meinrad's goal to start the Institute for Sacred Music through the "Forward Together: For the Life of the Church" campaign, she knew they had to support it.

"When I saw that Saint Meinrad was doing this, I said, 'Oh, well, that's right in our wheelhouse. That's something we must back. We need new music in the Church,'" she says.

Stan Krempp learned about foundations while he attended business school at Indiana University. He always had the idea to start one, and that's what he did, gradually, by saving $50 a month.

"My dad had such discipline, and the biggest gift he had was to see the big picture, and he had big plans. He started saving in the 1950s, and the foundation was incorporated in the 1960s," Jeanne explains. "By 1987, there was $1.2 million in there. It was all his own money, no donations."

Stan founded United Cabinet Incorporated in 1954, which later became Aristokraft, and is now Masterbrand Cabinet Corporation. He viewed the foundation as a way to give back to the hard-working employees in his factories and to the community. He also believed religious institutions were the backbone of the community.

As Stan aged, his daughters, Jeanne and Martha took over the duties of the foundation. In 2022, the sisters decided to fold the foundation into the Dubois County Community Foundation as a donor-advised endowment that would continue to support the areas that Jeanne says were the nearest and dearest to her father's heart, religious institutions, and the arts.

Stan and his wife, Mary Jane, loved the arts. They passed that love on to Jeanne, who started taking piano lessons in second grade. She played the organ in church and studied piano until eighth grade. When she was a sophomore at Marian Heights Academy in Ferdinand, IN, she started to sing.

"I had all these Barbara Streisand records, and I would sing with all the records and work on my voice. So, my voice got better and better," she explains.

Her dad would take her to the theater, and she would see the people on stage and think, "I could do that." She went on to study at the IU School of Music and after graduation, she pursued a theater career in New York City.

"I got pretty good, but I wasn't good enough," she explains. "I didn't have the physical stamina that you have to have to support yourself in a career. You really have to have a workhorse of a voice. It made me appreciate all the people who can do that."

After two and a half years in New York, she returned home, but a love for music and theater has stayed with her.

"To me, music is like food. Personally, singing is the air I breathe," says Jeanne. "It's hard to explain this to people, but music can draw you closer to God."

During the pandemic in 2020, when she couldn't go anywhere, she completely retrained her voice. Singing helped her cope on the toughest days of the pandemic.

"I'd sing some songs of praise, praying for help, direction, whatever. It works," she says. "It's my personal connection to God and it always has been. For me, God is so real through the music."

She has been singing in the choir at Precious Blood in Jasper ever since. Her personal connection to music and her experience singing in church fuels her interest in the Institute for Sacred Music.

"Saint Meinrad is an anchor in our community. It's a tradition and it's part of the Church," says Jeanne. "To me, the music in church is so important. It needs to be supported. I'm really excited about the music program at Saint Meinrad."