Community Foundation of the Ozarks

The CFO's Julie Leeth (third from left) presents a ceremonial check for $11,100 to members of the Nixa Education Foundation.

The Nixa Education Foundation received $11,100 with a recent ceremonial check presentation successfully completing the Harry Cooper Supply Company Campaign for the Ozarks to build long-term education funding through philanthropy.

The Foundation raised $21,930 to receive the matching funds through the Cooper Phase II Challenge for members of the CFO’s Rural Schools Partnership during 2010. The total of $33,030 is designated for the Foundation’s Legacy Fund, which preserves and invests a core amount to create an annual distribution of funds to help stabilize the district’s revenue.

Nixa was among 26 southern Missouri rural schools to participate in the year-long challenge grant opportunity, which raised nearly $1 million from generous donors and the Harry Cooper Supply Company to build long-term sustainability for these districts. The other districts are: Alton, Aurora, Ava, Bolivar, Bradleyville, Cassville, Dallas County, Dora, Eminence, Fair Grove, Fairview, Gainesville, Hermann, Hollister, Houston, Lockwood, Logan-Rogersville, Monett, Reeds Spring, Seymour, Valle, Warsaw, Weaubleau, West Plains and Willard.

The Nixa Education Foundation held a number of activities to raise the funds for the matching-grant opportunity. Foundation President Becky Sawyer said the group had a $100 for 100 campaign for Nixa alumni involved while faculty and staff contribute through payroll deductions. She said students and parents made donations to honor people special to them, and students also created and sold Christmas cards to raise money.

“There’s no way we could have done it without the support of the entire community – faculty staff, students and alumni, and businesses,” Sawyer said. “Everyone had a piece in this and we want to thank everyone. It was truly a combined effort of many.

“We also appreciate the Harry Cooper Company and thank them for this opportunity,” she said. “If it had not been for making this grant available to us, I’m certain we would have $30,000 less in our endowment fund.”

Humanitarian Award founder Jewell Thompson Schweitzer with 2010 recipient Doug Pitt

Care to Learn Founder Doug Pitt was honored as the 2010 Humanitarian today for his creation of a program to provide students with basic food, health and hygiene needs that began in Springfield and has now expanded to Bolivar, Ozark, Nixa and Republic.

More than 130 people honored Pitt at today’s luncheon for Care to Learn’s response in fulfilling more than 36,300 cases of need since he created it in 2008 with start-up support from Springfield businessman Jim D. Morris and the Jolie-Pitt Foundation.

“A community needs to take care of its own,” Pitt said in his remarks after accepting the award from Jewell Thompson Schweitzer, a longtime Community Foundation of the Ozarks supporter who established the Humanitarian award. “We should be very proud of the collaborative spirit that goes on every day in our community.”

The Humanitarian honor includes a $3,000 cash award, which Pitt said he will divide evenly among the five Care to Learn chapters.

The 2010 award marks the 21^st year of honoring humanitarians in the Ozarks. Mrs. Schweitzer established the award to pay tribute to individuals who place service to others as the primary motivating force in their lives. The 2009 award was presented to Oregon County ranchers and brothers Roger D. “Dusty” Shaw, Jr., a CFO board member, and William Shaw, for their philanthropic work in south-central Missouri.

Pitt was nominated for the award by friend and businessman Bobby Allison, Drury University President Todd Parnell, and SRC Holdings Corp. President Jack Stack.

Parnell described Pitt, the co-owner of ServiceWorld Computer Center in Springfield, as someone with “the heart of a philanthropist” who also has the good business sense to run an effective program. Allison chided Pitt about his golf game, saying he doesn’t have time to improve it because he’s busy working on the plight of those less fortunate in both the Ozarks and around the world.

In addition to his work on Care to Learn, Pitt was honored for his role as a goodwill ambassador to Tanzania and his support for construction of wells for clean drinking water in Africa as well as his role as co-chair of the Homelessness Task Force in Springfield.

CFO President Brian Fogle concluded the luncheon by thanking all the people who have supported Care to Learn since its founding.

“Doug Pitt saw children without shoes, without coats and even without shampoo, and said ‘Yes, I can do something about this’,” Fogle said. “Others of you offer support with your time, talent, and resources in supporting CFO, and other non-profits in our community.

“We have 100 reasons not to get involved, or let someone else do it,” he said. “But thank God you here in this room have hearts that refuse to let you look at a first-grader without a coat on a sub-zero day, and tell him or her, ‘no’.”

At a recent Ozarks Food Harvest Mobile Pantry in Joplin, 150 people received eggs, cheese, meat, bread, cereal, Gatorade, and snack foods to feed their families

CFO affiliates raised $105,000 and received $100,000 in matching funds from the Walmart State Foundation to fight chronic hunger in their communities.

A total of 19 affiliates successfully completed the Challenge Grant, which is being channeled primarily through the Ozarks Food Harvest, which has a 28-county service area that largely mirrors the CFO’s region.

The CFO affiliates that completed the Hunger Challenge are: Aurora, Bolivar, Cassville, DACO (Dade County), Dallas County, El Dorado Springs, Finley River (Ozark area), Houston, Jacks Fork, Southwest Missouri (Carthage-Joplin area), Marshfield, Nixa, Oregon County, Seymour, Stockton, Table Rock Lake, Taney County, and West Plains.

The Wal-Mart State Foundation State Giving Program selected the Ozarks Food Harvest for its challenge grant program last year, which began in response to the national report – “Hunger in America 2010” – describing the extent to which hunger plagues Ozarks communities. An estimated 155,000 Ozarkers face chronic hunger issues, according to the report.

For more information, see the full  Hunger Challenge news release .