GO LEAD provides a series of workshops designed to address specific training and professional development issues related to non-profit management.

The scholarships are available  for one of these two workshop series:

• The Nuts & Bolts of Non-Profit Management; or
• Non-Profit Management in the 21st Century

Applications can be submitted online and the application deadline is 5 p.m., Wednesday, Aug. 25, 2010.

The program is open to any non-profit leader or manager of an organization that partners with the Community Foundation.

For questions or more information, e-mail Julie Leeth, Executive Vice President, or call (417) 864-6199.

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.

The new grantmaking programs include:

Metropolitan Springfield Red-Flag Response Grants – The Community Foundation will offer $225,000 in challenge grants intended to help support existing programs of Springfield area non-profits that address red-flag issues identified in the 2009 Community Focus Report for Springfield-Greene County.

Coover Regional Poverty Grants – This program will award grants to support new or innovative non-profit programs outside of Springfield-Greene County aimed at fighting rural poverty. These grants are made possible through the Louis L. and Julia Dorothy Coover Charitable Foundation Regional Grantmaking Program, which is a partnership between the CFO and Commerce Trust Company.

Agency Partners Endowment-Building Grants – These grants, offered to the more than 350 non-profit agencies that partner with the Community Foundation, are intended to support efforts to plan, develop and implement endowment-building programs. These can be used for projects such as promotional materials, fundraisers, information/education programs and other awareness efforts.

The Rural Schools Partnership also has three grant cycles now open.

For more information on the CFO’s grantmaking programs, please e-mail Julie Leeth, Executive Vice President, or call her at (417) 864-6199.

We’d like to welcome this latest group of new funds established since mid-June. Watch the website during the coming year for future acknowledgements of our growth in planned-giving and capacity-building funds.

Beshore Family Foundation – Lance and Sharon Beshore of Carthage established this family and community fund with the Community Foundation of Southwest Missouri to assist them with their charitable giving.

John & Betty Brecht Endowment Fund for United Methodist Church in Clinton – Betty Brecht established this designated endowment fund to benefit the United Methodist Church in honor and memory of her late husband, John. Mrs. Brecht also established the John & Betty Brecht Endowment Fund for Clinton Arts Council in honor and memory of John. These are component funds of the Truman Lake Community Foundation.

Community Support Services of Missouri Fund and Community Support Services of Missouri Endowment Fund – These funds were established by Community Support Services in Joplin to help fund the organization’s work with children and adults with developmental disabilities. These also were established with the Community Foundation of Southwest Missouri. We also want to welcome Community Support Services as a new agency partner in the social services category.

Billy Coyle Leadership Fund – Bill Coyle established this designated endowment fund to provide a student leadership award to the Conway School District. The student must demonstrate traits and qualities of a leader or have been involved in laboratory opportunities for leadership. Preference will be given to students pursuing higher education as a science teacher, then in the science field and then in law enforcement.

Dallas County Pet Outreach Program Fund – This capacity-building fund will provide for the needs of animals in the Dallas County area, such as spay/neuter services, animal medical bills, and improved living conditions. A component of the Dallas County Community Foundation, the program also will join the CFO as a new agency partner in the environment/animals category.

The Gary Funk Running Jenny Fund for Rural Schools – This Field-of-Interest Fund was established to honor and commemorate outgoing CFO President Gary Funk’s service to the Foundation. Grants from the fund will be used to assist rural schools and education.

Meramec Regional Community Foundation Community Grantmaking Fund – This unrestricted endowment fund will support long-term grantmaking for the Meramec Regional Community Foundation. The Meramec Regional Community Foundation also established a Capacity-Building Fund to provide dollars for grantmaking in the area.

Tri County Pregnancy Resource Center Fund – The newly established Tri County Pregnancy Resource Center established this capacity fund to help support its mission. This component of the Aurora Area Community Foundation also joins the CFO as an agency partner.

West Plains Agriculture-Science Building Fund – The West Plains R-7 Educational Foundation established this capacity-building fund as a component of the Community Foundation of West Plains to support an agriculture-science building project.

EMH at West Plains High School Fund – Haley Bray and Kathy Miller, along with the West Plains R-7 Educational Foundation established this capacity-building fund to support the Educating the Mentally Handicapped program at the high school. This is also a component of the Community Foundation of West Plains.

The CFO Cultural Investment Fund will offer loans of $1,000 to $20,000 to non-profit groups to help cover the down-payment costs associated with booking major performers, shows or exhibits. The loans, which will carry a 4 percent interest rate, are designed to be re-paid by ticket proceeds, sponsorship funds, or other income raised by the event.

“Managers of our local arts and cultural venues have said that the lack of capital to pay the up-front costs required in many of these contracts impedes their ability to book major regional or national shows,” said Brian Fogle, executive vice president of the Community Foundation.

In fact, the City of Springfield’s Arts, Culture and Tourism Strategic Planning Committee also plans to identify this issue as one of its goals for enhancing arts and culture offerings in Springfield, he said.

The community arts leaders who serve on the CFO’s Arts Programming Sustainability Initiative committee will review and approve all applications. The Fund will be open to all eligible Springfield-Greene County 501(c)3 agencies, but each participant will be required to make a one-time investment of $2,500 into the fund in order to submit applications. The CFO’s initial investment will be $50,000.

The Cultural Investment Fund is the second component of the CFO’s Mission-Related Investment Program. The CFO Board of Directors created this program in 2009 to commit up to 2 percent of the CFO’s assets for community investment. The program represents the CFO’s commitment to the “double-bottom line” of investing in enterprises that produce both financial and social returns for Ozarks communities, instead of investing assets solely in financial markets.

College Heights Christian School in Joplin established this organizational fund to help with long-term sustainable funding for the school. The fund will be a component of the Community Foundation of Southwest Missouri, the satellite office based in Carthage.

The school also will become a new Agency Partner in the Education group.

The school, founded in 1978, has a mission of partnering with parents to encourage student growth in a Christ-centered balance of quality, academics, athletics and spiritual growth.

The Challenge has been made possible by a $100,000 gift from the Walmart Foundation State Giving Program available to match each dollar raised through the CFO’s network of participating affiliates, which largely mirrors the Ozarks Food Harvest’s 29-county service area across southern Missouri.

The Challenge grant was developed in response to a dramatic report - “Hunger in America 2010” – that described the extent to which hunger continues to plague Ozarks communities. Made even more pronounced by the recession, chronic hunger diminishes the lives of some 155,000 Ozarks residents a year.

“According to the landmark “Hunger in America” survey, 25 percent of food pantry clients in southwest Missouri have been laid off in the past 18 months,” says Bart Brown, President and CEO of the Ozarks Food Harvest. “More compelling, one in four of those clients were laid off from professional or managerial jobs.  We’re seeing a new type of client – the unemployed middle class.

“These people have assets such as homes and cars, and if they can manage to hold onto them, these assets disqualify them for federal food programs,” he adds. “The need for private food assistance here in the Ozarks will continue to increase for the next several years because we will be dealing with sustained long-term unemployment, higher and deeper poverty levels, and dramatic increases in food insecurity.”

Brown and the OFH staff are gratified by the feedback they receive from clients who have found the food bank’s network of programs, including the mobile food pantries, the Weekend Backpack Program and the Kids Café, which serves hot meals or snacks to about 1,000 children each night in 26 Ozarks communities.

Here are some examples of what they’ve told the Ozarks Food Harvest:

“A lot of times we don’t have enough stuff to put a meal together. We eat a can of vegy for a meal or sometimes plain rice. If it was not for the pantry, we would not eat at all.

–Rebecca, age 42

“At the age of 31, I lost my job, couldn’t get any assistance, had two young children and I went to the restaurant dumpster each evening to get whatever food  I could to feed my kids. For about two and a half months, that was how I fed my family.”

–Kerry, age 40

“I’m hungry all the time. It gets on my nerves. It makes me have a big tummy ache. Geez.”

–Wade, age 5

One of the benefits of tackling hunger through the Ozarks Food Harvest is that it is able to use its network of resources to leverage about $10 in food for every $1 donated, which is why the $100,000 Walmart grant has the capacity to leverage $1 million in food.

For more information on how to help CFO affiliates meet their challenge goals, please e-mail Winter Skelton, Development Operations Coordinator, or call 417-864-6199.

On the Web:

This animated graphic visualizes the spread of unemployment across the United States.

This “Hunger in the Ozarks” video was presented by the Jeannette L. Musgrave Foundation, the Roy W. Slusher Foundation, and the Lelia Heuer Foundation.

The Greater Ozarks Audubon Society has raised $10,000 and received a $10,000 matching grant from the CFO in the third phase of the Stewardship Ozarks Initiative.  Audubon Vice-President David Catlin (left) and President Myra Scroggs met with CFO President Gary Funk (right) recently to receive the $10,000 matching grant, which will become part of the Greater Ozarks Audubon Society’s endowment fund.

The Stewardship Ozarks Initiative, made possible with a major gift from Johnny Morris on behalf of Wonders of Wildlife, has provided challenge grants to strengthen or establish endowment funds for environmental stewardship. More than $1 million has been raised by local conservation-oriented organizations to support endowment-building goals.  This challenge is made possible by leadership contributions from Gregg and Nancy Galbraith, Larry and Dr. Nancy O’Reilly, Todd and Betty Parnell, and the Upper White River Basin Foundation. Addition support comes from Sally Baird, the Community Foundation of the Ozarks Philanthropy Initiative, Susie Henry, and Dr. Tom and Dr. Kim Prater.

Across the country, nature lovers and professional biologists are teaming up to identify as many species as possible (the “bio”) in an area over the course of 24 hours (the “blitz”). The Missouri Prairie Foundation (MPF), a Community Foundation of the Ozarks Agency Partner, is hosting its own version with the Penn-Sylvania Prairie BioBlitz (flyer) on Saturday, May 29 and Sunday, May 30.

Join experts in many natural history fields to locate, identify and document prairie amphibians, reptiles, birds, ants, butterflies, moths, bees, beetles, small mammals including bats, land snails, vascular plants, mosses, and liverworts and help inventory species on this biologically rich, original Missouri 160-acre prairie owned by MPF in Dade County.

The BioBlitz officially begins at 2pm on May 29 and lasts through the morning of the 30th. Participants may camp for free on the prairie Saturday night.

You should sign up for particular groups by RSVPing to info@moprairie.com. There will be concurrent activities Saturday afternoon, Saturday night and Sunday morning, so you can sign up to join up a group at each time. If you want to stay for the potluck picnic dinner on the 29th, please bring a dish to share, as well as snacks/breakfast for Sunday morning.

Saturday May 29, 2:00, individual groups will look for native bees, beetles, ants, butterflies, vascular plants and land snails.

Saturyday May 29, 6 or 6:30, potluck picnic, followed by stargazing, bat surveying, moth surveying and tent camping.

On Sunday morning, individual groups will look for birds, bryophytes, amphibians, reptiles and check small mammal traps.

Visit http://www.moprairie.org/Events.html for a detailed schedule of events.

RSVP to info@moprairie.com or call 1-888-843-6739.

The Junior League of Springfield, a CFO agency partner, recently received the 2010 Junior League Award for    Community Impact for its efforts to fight child abuse through Isabel’s House, Crisis Nursery of the Ozarks. The award was announced at the Association of Junior Leagues International Inc 88th Annual Conference held in Orlando, FL. The award carries a $10,000 prize.

Junior League of Springfield is one of five funders for the Community Focus Report which has been published in 2004, 2005, 2007, and 2009. A re-ocurring “red flag” in this report has been the level of child abuse rates in Springfield and Greene County. Responding to this need, Junior League of Springfield spearheaded an effort to establish a crisis nursery bringing a 24/7 residentialcare facility for children, ages birth to 12, whose families are in crisis. Since opening its doors, Isabel’s House has served 845 children and 370 families. To view the most recent Community Focus report, please visit this link.

To learn more about the Junior League of Springfield, please visit www.jlspringfield.org.