Workforce housing, an all-ages dental center and a sea-based education program are all receiving six-digit grants from the Martha’s Vineyard Bank Charitable Foundation, which recently announced a total of $600,000 in awards to three Island nonprofits following its Nov. 9 annual meeting.

Island Housing Trust was awarded $250,000 for affordable housing projects in Aquinnah, Edgartown and Oak Bluffs.

Island Health Care received a $250,000 award to help fund its planned dental center in Edgartown. Intended to serve children and adults regardless of their insurance status, the dental center got its first boost earlier this year with a $500,000 grant from MV Youth.

The Foundation for Underway Experiential Learning (FUEL), which takes Island children to sea on educational voyages out of Vineyard Haven, was awarded $100,000 toward building a new sailing ship to replace its venerable topsail schooner Shenandoah.

The bank’s charitable foundation also established a new $250,000 Philip J. Norton Scholarship Fund, honoring the Edgartown attorney and longtime town moderator who died Nov. 6.

The guidelines and structure of the scholarship will be firmed up at a future meeting, bank vice president of marketing Christine (CJ) Conrad told the Gazette this week.

The charitable foundation is managed by the bank’s 12-member board of trustees, which includes bank president James Anthony and is chaired by Island attorney Ronald Rappaport.

The foundation also is advised by the bank’s 66 corporators, residents of the Vineyard and Cape Cod who volunteer for terms of up to 10 years, Ms. Conrad told the Gazette.

“Because we’re a mutual organization, we don’t have shareholders,” she said.

“Our corporators act as representatives of the community. They’re really ambassadors for the bank, as well as a cross section of community that helps us maintain our mission and guiding principles,” Ms. Conrad said, citing candor and honesty as key values alongside a deep commitment to the bank’s work.

“We consider banking to be a craft. It’s usually represented as a science, but there’s also an art,” she said, noting the complexities and nuances of community banking.

Corporators can be nominated by trustees, bank staff, other corporators or anyone in the bank community, Ms. Conrad said.

A new group is selected by the trustees and corporators at each November’s foundation meeting. This year, five new Martha’s Vineyard corporators are joining the bank along with one from Falmouth: Paulo DeOliveira, Dukes County register of deeds; George Davis, Dukes County clerk of courts; Julianne (Juli) Vanderhoop, owner and creator of the Orange Peel Bakery in Aquinnah and a member of the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head; Ann Smith, executive director of Featherstone Center for the Arts in Oak Bluffs; Chuck Sullivan, founder of Oak Bluffs architecture firm, Sullivan and Associates; and Robert Antonucci, a former president of Fitchburg State University, state commissioner of education and superintendent of schools in Falmouth.