After a hacker attack took down its website, the Lowndes Community Foundation board voted Wednesday to extend its grant application deadline.

Chanley Rainey, LCF co-chair, said during the board’s meeting Wednesday, it voted to extend its 2026 grant cycle application deadline to Sept. 8.

“Our website got hacked, and so I know we’ve heard from at least one person who was saying that they couldn’t submit (an application because) they couldn’t find the application online,” Rainey told The Dispatch. “They were having trouble submitting, and we don’t know how many people have had that experience. So we’ve had to kind of quickly throw up a different web page.”

LCF, an affiliate of CREATE Foundation in Tupelo, is a charitable foundation that uses its endowment to provide grant funding for nonprofits and community organizations aiming to benefit Lowndes County.

So far this grant cycle, which opened for applications in March, LCF has seen about 13 applications submitted between email and website submissions, Rainey said.

Rainey said with the hacking issue, the group is currently looking to recoup about four of those applications from the website.

“I’m in communication with our website host, and he just told me he thinks he can get them for me,” Rainey said. “But I was still kind of waiting to find out if those are going to have to be resubmitted. So hopefully we still have those, and that’s not going to be an issue. But it may be something I have to reach out to people about.”

In the meantime, the foundation has already created a new application link for future applications.

With an extended deadline, Rainey said LCF hopes to see more applications filed over the next few weeks for the foundation’s board to consider.

In 2025, LCF received about 29 applications and selected seven local organizations to receive more than $38,000, ranging from Cook Elementary School to Helping Hands of Columbus.

The foundation typically gives 4% of its endowment away in grants each year, reinvesting more than $276,000 since 2003.

Those funds have gone to projects including FORGE’s Career Expo, a youth recreation center at Columbus Air Force Base and renovations at the YMCA, the foundation’s website said.

After raising about $35,000 at the foundation’s first-ever fundraiser in July 2025 and receiving an additional $90,000 from misplaced Walmart stock in the foundation’s name earlier this year, the foundation expects to give out closer to $42,000 this grant cycle, Rainey said.

The only qualifications the board asks in the application are that the organization benefits the Lowndes County area and that it has 501(c)(3) status or is a governmental body.

After the application window closes, the board will discuss this year’s applications and announce selections by Nov. 1, Rainey said. After that, funds will be distributed by Dec. 31 to those organizations.