Community Foundation of the Ozarks

Meramec Regional Community Foundation President Laura Antolak (left) listens to Secretary-Treasurer Richard Cavender, at a recent organizing meeting in St. James.

The Community Foundation of the Ozarks welcomes the Meramec Regional Community Foundation as its 42^nd affiliate.

This represents the CFO’s first collaboration with a planning commission: The Meramec Foundation is a new venture within the Meramec Regional Planning Commission, which serves eight counties in central Missouri – Crawford, Dent, Gasconade, Maries, Osage, Phelps, Pulaski and Washington – and 32 cities within those counties.

The MRPC provides economic development assistance, housing assistance, planning and development expertise, solid-waste management, emergency-management planning, grant writing and administration, small-business loans, transportation planning, and other communication and community-building services.

The newly created Foundation will support community charitable grantmaking within its service area. The Community Foundation’s existing affiliates within this region will continue to operate their own asset-building and grantmaking programs based on their specific priorities.

Meramec Regional Community Foundation President Laura Antolak said the Foundation was a natural outgrowth of the services provided by the regional planning commission.

CFO President Brian Fogle said he expect the existing affiliates within this area to continue doing their important work; the new Foundation will provide a means to expand to other underserved areas that aren’t being reached by existing community foundations.

The organizing board members for the Meramec Regional Community Foundation are: President Laura Antolak; Vice-President Russell Scheulen; and Secretary-Treasurer Richard Cavender. Each county in the Meramec region will have a representative on the MRCF board and appointments are underway.

We’d like to welcome this first group of new funds to kick off the Community Foundation’s new fiscal year.

The Hartville R-II School District established The Hartville Teacher’s Support Fund so that each teacher will have first day of school classroom funding. Hartville is a new Agency Partner in the education category.

The newly formed Hartville School Foundation established a fund to support the programs and projects of the Hartville R-II School District. The Foundation also becomes a new Agency Partner in education.

A group of Ozark women established the Neighbors Helping Neighbors Fund. Lisa Engel, Shirley Wikander, Linda Thomas, Ginger Holzer and Jeanette Hipskind established this fund to assist them as they hold fundraisers to help make the Ozark community a better place to live. This fund is part of the Finley River Community Foundation.

The Missouri Medical Assistance Program Fund will support the mission of the Missouri Medical Assistance Program to assist low-income individuals and families within the community who need  immediate assistance with their medical bills and debt. MOMAP is a new Agency Partner in the health category.

The Greater Ozarks Audubon Society established The GLADE Fund to support the GLADE project and student conservation projects of students who have participated in GLADE. This is the group’s second fund.

The Rotaract Club of Springfield Fund has been established to provide an endowment to support  charitable activities and programs in the area. Rotaract is the Rotary organization for members under the age of 30.

U.S. Rep. Jo Ann Emerson leads the ribbon cutting of the new Ozarks Medical Center emergency department in West Plains.

The dedication of a new 16-bed emergency department at the Ozarks Medical Center in West Plains also represents the first project completed under the CFO’s new Mission-Related Investment program focusing on the “double-bottom line” of investing in our own communities.

The facility, which will open for patients at 7 a.m., Tuesday, July 20, offers improvements such as individual rooms for patient privacy that surround a nurse’s station with state-of-the-art patient tracking. Each patient room also has its own cardiac-monitoring system, access to portable imaging equipment, and EKG monitoring capabilities to speed up response time for potential cardiac patients. The previous facility had one EKG system that was shared among the treatment rooms and some of its 12 treatment rooms were separated only by curtains, which gave patients less privacy.

Two of the rooms are larger for major trauma cases and another room is equipped as a haz-mat facility if decontamination is necessary. Two of the rooms also are designed as “negative pressure” spaces for infectious patients where the contaminated air is prevented from reaching other parts of the hospital.

Construction of the new emergency room began more than five years ago. The shell of the building was completed in 2005, but challenging economic conditions and access to financial markets halted construction. In 2009, the CFO made its first mission-related investment – a $1 million low-interest loan. The hospital also received a $500,000 federal grant and the Ozarks Medical Center Foundation has raised $2 million toward its $3 million capital-campaign goal.

Construction resumed last August; the Sunday, July 18, dedication took place two months ahead of the estimated completion date. OMC President and CEO David Zechman noted with pride that 87 percent of the contractors for the project were from the West Plains area.

CFO Board member Dusty Shaw, also on the OMC Foundation Board, recognized the CFO’s role during his remarks at the dedication ceremony. New CFO Board Chairman David Pointer also was recognized as the hospital’s legal counsel.

The goal of the Mission-Related Investment initiative is to invest up to 2 percent of the CFO’s assets for low-interest loans for community needs when conventional financing options are not available.