Once again it’s my favorite time of year! Each spring our Grant Committee recommends general grants to our Trustees for a vote and then I get to write checks. This year we had several members of our fourth generation, Adjunct Trustees, actively participate in reviewing grant applications and making a recommendation.
Thanks to all the organizations that took the time to participate in our grant making process and share their visions for opportunity and inclusiveness within our communities! Philanthropy often looks like a top-down, one way street, but in truth it’s a collaborative partnership. We wouldn’t, couldn’t, exist without you!
As always, our Grant Committee had a tough job. This year they selected eight organizations in California, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington. You can learn more about the organizations and projects below!
Kirkwood Sky Education Foundation (Kirkwood, CA)
This year’s grant will be used to purchase and install rubber flooring for the team room that will increase safety for athletes and staff through injury prevention and provide durability and noise reduction. The 600 square foot space serves ~70 athletes, their families, and approximately a dozen coaching staff. In this small space are ski lockers (and in most cases shared ski lockers), boot dryer, tuning bench, microwave, table, bench, small staff room, small executive director office, and storage.
Tahoe Coalition for the Homeless (South Lake Tahoe, CA)
Our 2018 grant will help establish Coordinated Entry. HUD requires that in order to continue to receive funding, organizations like TCH must establish and operate “centralized or coordinated entry systems” to improve efficiency of local crisis response systems and improve fairness and ease of access to resources. Through Coordinated Entry, our community and the county will be able to better understand who is homeless in our county and prioritize resources and streamline our processing for addressing and ending homelessness in our county. Tahoe Coalition for the Homeless will be able to identify the most vulnerable people living without permanent shelter in South Lake Tahoe. By understanding the needs of our homeless population, we will be able to develop programs to better address these needs and apply for federal funding to provide housing assistance. At the end of the 2017-18 winter, we will collect data on guests of the Warm Room or others experiencing homelessness who are referred to us for services.
Friendship Clinic (Boise, ID)
This grant will fund needed repairs that include: Drywall damage in the restroom and several other areas of the clinic need to be repaired, and all clinic walls and ceilings need to be repainted after the repairs. Additionally, funds will be used to purchase and install a new toilet in the restroom and replace two old metal-casing windows with new energy efficient windows that will help reduce the costs for heating and cooling the clinic.
Together, these improvements will help the clinic to continue to provide a warm, inviting sanctuary for patients to receive respectful health care services. It will provide a safe location for the many dedicated and compassionate volunteer medical providers from the community and students from the University of Washington WWAMI program, Boise Veterans Affairs Medical Center medical residents, Physician Assistant students from Idaho State University, as well as Nursing, Nurse Practitioner, and Health Science students from Boise State University and Nursing students from Lewis Clark State College.
Friends of Oregon School for the Deaf (Salem, OR)
The School’s goal is to provide high quality, productivity experience using materials, tools, and equipment currently found in the manufacturing and construction industries. More and more, the construction and manufacturing industries depend on technology. These businesses are in need of workers who know how to operate Computer Numeric Control (CNC) systems. In CNC production, the item or product is designed on a computer, then sent electronically to the “robotic” cutting machine. CNCs can produce items that are consistently precise and of high quality. A CNC router improves factory productivity by reducing waste, frequency of errors, and the time required to get the finished product to market. PFF’s grant will assist with the purchase of a CNC router. With computer numeric control technology is in place, OSD’s students will be more fully prepared to compete for positions in the workforce with the self-confidence, having been trained on the very equipment that they will see on the job.
Friends of Cornelius Library (Cornelius, OR)
The library’s primary goals are to strengthen youth and family literacy, and increase the social and economic vitality of the community. Funds from this PFF grant will help construct a new library of 13,800 sf that will add a 100-person meeting room; four study rooms ideal for tutoring, student collaboration and entrepreneur activities; a children’s area with STEM programming and early literacy collections, an expanded Spanish language collection, a safe and welcoming teen center, both hard-wired and laptop computers, a café operated by a small business training program, and a courtyard with educational components such as native plants and a storm water feature.
Oregon Community Programs (Eugene, OR)
A grant from PFF will fund a project to focus on short-term family based crisis-respite program with two aims: (1) to provide a same day, soft-landing in a trained family for qualifying youth who unexpectedly lose their foster placement and to maintain them for up to 21 days while guardians create a sustainable placement plan, and; (2) to prevent some of these disruptions by providing planned respite, and creating an opportunity for children and foster families to recharge their batteries so they can continue as resources for at risk children.
Eugene Science Center (Eugene, OR)
This grant will be use to construct a covered outdoor classroom and community space. In addition to its use by community members during and after museum hours, the area can be used to expand and complement the current programs offered by Eugene Science Center, including the summer camps and school field trips. The outdoor classroom is an innovative and exciting way to foster and nurture family relationships through shared learning. The unprecedented interest and excitement shown by families and people of all ages around the solar eclipse in 2017 suggests that Science Factory has an opportunity to foster an interest in outdoor ecosystems.
Children’s Therapy Center (Kent, WA)
The Access to Pediatric Therapy through Technology Project (APTT) aims to increase access to physical, occupational, speech, and feeding therapy, early intervention, and related services for low-income children with special needs in South King County. This grant supports the cost of purchasing laptops for home-based Early Intervention providers. Having dedicated, easily portable, up-to-date computers for each of our providers to use during therapy is expected to cut down significantly on the amount of time that providers spend charting, which will ultimately increase the number of visits to low-income South King County children with developmental disabilities and delays.
