Making a difference at home and abroad

InvestmentNews and the Invest in Others Charitable Foundation will honor financial advisers who have made a difference in their communities at an awards dinner in New York on Wednesday.

Jeff Henderson (right), host of Food Network’s “The Chef Jeff Project,” will be the keynote speaker at the dinner, which will begin at 7 p.m. at Cipriani 42nd Street.

Awards will be presented in four individual categories and one group category. Individual categories include the Mentoring Excellence Award, the Volunteer of the Year Award, the Community Service Award and the Global Community Impact Award. The group category is the Volunteer Team Award.

Nearly 300 nominations were received for this year’s Community Leadership Awards. From those nominations, three finalists were selected in each category. Profiles of these finalists can be viewed here.

Since 2010, these 15 adviser finalists have personally donated $578,000 and raised nearly $2.3 million for their charities, which serve causes such as needy and at-risk children, disease research and awareness campaigns, people with disabilities, community poverty and aid to impoverished countries.

As in past years, the Invest in Others Charitable Foundation will make generous donations to the charity designated by each category’s honoree. Furthermore, Invest in Others will make a donation to each of the finalists’ charities.

Proceeds from the awards dinner will go to the Invest in Others Charitable Foundation, a registered 501(c)(3) charity that supports philanthropic and volunteer activities among financial advisers in the United States.

Mr. Henderson, an executive chef and best-selling author, developed a passion for cooking while serving nearly 10 years in prison on drug-related charges. In his show, he puts six at-risk youths to work at his catering company to help turn their lives around.