Bruce Kintner, founder of Samaritan Car Care Clinic, is this year’s winner of the National Jefferson Award, often referred to as the “Nobel Prize for Community Service.”
Kintner – one of five people honored this past weekend in New York City by the national service organization Multiplying Good – founded his nonprofit in 2007 as an outreach effort at Madison Avenue Christian Church in Covington. Kintner took home the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Award for Outstanding Service Benefiting Local Communities.
The Cold Spring resident worked with social service agencies and forged partnerships with local garages to make affordable car repairs, helping low-income working families get to work and maintain independence.
In 2022, the program helped 315 families, 70% of them single mothers. Kintner and his team worked to win several major grants to allow the organization to build a repair center in Covington. Kintner stepped down from his career at PNC bank to direct the program.
“This program celebrates individuals whose service and imagination have a continuing impact on the community,” Bill Shula, chair of the local Jefferson Award program, said in a statement following Kintner’s local win in March.
“These things are going on in our community and most people don’t even know it,” he added. “We are honored to help identify and reward outstanding service.”
10th local winner since 2005
Cincinnati native Robert Taft and former first lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis founded the National Jefferson Award in 1972.
Kintner became the 10th national winner from the Tristate since The Rotary Club of Cincinnati began sponsoring the local Jefferson Awards in 2005. The most recent previous local awardee was Katie Nzekwu, co-founder of Found Village. The Greater Cincinnati program is one of more than 90 nominating agencies across the country.
This year, Kintner was one of three local finalists for the Greater Cincinnati award. The others were Amy Vann, creator of the Give Like A Mother (GLAM) initiative to provide school clothes for low-income children, and Joe and Noel Julnes-Dehner, who founded the Summer Camp Reading Program to help local children build reading skills.
Nominations for the 2025 Jefferson Award open in January.
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