Community Foundation of the Ozarks

More than 60 CFO affiliate presidents and board members attending today’s annual conference in Springfield were encouraged to think expansively about the leadership and resource development roles they can offer as anchors in their communities.

They shared stories of successful collaborations fostered through listening to their communities and convening the right people to accomplish shared goals. Greater Seymour Community Foundation founder and board member Ron Geidd recalled how the affiliate led a Seymour 2026 long-range planning process that uncovered a serious concern among residents that the frequently used train tracks through the center of town cut off access to the fire department when trains rolled through. That led to construction of a second fire station on the other side of the tracks to allay those fears.

A larger affiliate, the Joplin-based Community Foundation of Southwest Missouri, used a recent grant cycle for tornado recovery to encourage a number of groups to collaborate on one application to fund much-needed affordable housing, and that coalition received CFSWMO’s largest grant ever of $1.5 million.

CFO President Brian Fogle said it’s not easy work, nor does it promise quick results. But offering community foundations as “safe spaces” to convene multiple stakeholders on community issues will lead to more effective grantmaking, and produce stronger results to build new assets. (more…)

One of the common refrains of emergency-management professionals is “plan the work, then work the plan.”

That’s what Jennifer Tilley has done as principal of Nixa’s Early Learning Center – fire drills, tornado drills, intruder drills, even earthquake drills. And those drills – along with the fortuitous arrival of emergency radios funded by the Nixa Community Foundation – served her well during a recent emergency that required a schoolwide evacuation.

The Nixa Community Foundation awarded the school a grant for $1,600 to replace four of its aging emergency radios. The school resource officer got a great bid that actually purchased seven radios with the funding. After the radios arrived and were programmed with the local frequencies, Tilley distributed them to classroom teachers – the seven new radios, and a couple of older ones still in use, meant every classroom now had an emergency radio.

A week later, on March 2, a car crashed near the school and hit a natural gas pipeline that serves the school and a nearby manufacturing plant. A few minutes later, firefighters told school officials to evacuate the school, which has about 100 students ages 3-5 and 32 staff members.

Tilley says she immediately kicked into her emergency training, but the planned evacuation meeting spot was too close to the gas leak. Orders from the fire department kept changing in the first chaotic minutes as teachers started hustling students to different areas of  the parking lot and finally to a spot where busses would pick them up to go to the community center.

“We literally had all of our students and staff accounted for and on the buses in three minutes,” Tilley said. “I know it was those radios, I know it was.”

She said the staff could listen to the frequencies used for the buses and the school resource officers as well as communicate the changes of direction the evacuation was taking.

Once at the center, she wanted to make sure the situation was tightly controlled so they could keep careful track of the worried parents as they arrived to pick up their kids.

“We would radio the teacher to say a parent had arrived so we could have an actual one-on-one handoff,” she said.

“I cringe to think what might have happened had we not had the excellent means of communication on that day,” Tilley wrote afterward to NCF President Sharon Whitehill-Gray. “The timing could not have been better.”

For Tilley’s part, she said the experience helped improved their emergency planning even more. She said the school has put together a backpack of books to entertain the kids. She was lucky, she said, that a gentleman visiting the school that day to celebrate Dr. Seuss’ birthday brought his books with him when he evacuated. She’s adding a few other items such as diapers and wipes for the special-needs students who go to the school.

“Other than those few things,” she said, “everything went just like clockwork according to our plan.”

Please join us in welcoming Michael Chatman to the CFO, and back to the Ozarks,  in the new position of Senior Vice President of Philanthropy.

Chatman joins the CFO after working in Miami, Fla., for MajorDonors.com, a Boston-based firm that cultivates donor relationships and helps non-profit organizations develop and implement giving programs.

He is a graduate of Missouri State University with a Bachelor’s degree in political science. He also was named an All-American football player during his time at Missouri State. He received a post-graduate degree in entrepreneurship from the Harvard Business School’s Executive Education program.

Before joining MajorDonors.com, Chatman worked as the National Education Advocate at Anheuser-Busch prior to its merger with InBev. He also has produced a weekly radio program called “The Giving Show” on the Bloomberg/Wall Street Journal Business Network, which focuses on mission-related and next-generation philanthropy.