Leading Locally: Ozark Foothills Regional Community Foundation

Affiliate foundations

Foundation serves five Missouri counties

A five-county area of south-central Missouri shifts from rolling hills to flat land — but is linked by needs common among rural areas, a number of which are served through the Ozark Foothills Regional Community Foundation.

Representing Butler, Carter, Reynolds, Wayne and Ripley counties, the OFRCF was established in 2011 as the charitable arm of the Ozark Foothills Regional Planning Commission. The foundation has distributed more than $791,837 back to the community and holds assets totaling $2,108,771 as of June 2023.

“We’re a rural area, so financial planners and certain professionals are pretty hard to find,” says Russell French, president of the OFRCF’s board of directors. “We’ve had other boards or other entities that were trying to do similar things. But they didn’t have the administrative support that we have. That is a huge opportunity for us, so we’re a lot more active — and are able to be active — because of that.”

Since its inception, the OFRCF has distributed funds to a range of needs — such as transportation, nutrition and improvement of public spaces — throughout the largely rural area.

“Working with the planning commission has helped us identify some needs because we do serve a wide, large region,” French says. “We’re able to connect with certain entities because they’re already working with the planning commission so that helps a little bit.

“We try to have representation from all five counties on the board, so each board member brings something to the table in identifying those needs.”

Some of those needs and organizations the OFRCF has served include Ripley County Resource Ministries, a Doniphan-based group that leads monthly distributions of food, diapers and baby wipes to households in need; the Timothy Foundation, a nonprofit working to establish a food bank in Poplar Bluff; the community of Doniphan, where OFRCF funded improvements to the city park; and through purchasing school supplies for local students.

“I would say that our primary focus has been on providing support to small organizations that don’t have large budgets. We help them provide direct services to the community, mostly to alleviate poverty symptoms, nutritional insecurity and other issues that are common,” says Rebeca Pacheco, a board member of the OFRCF.

The foundation can also serve as a connection point between grant opportunities and local organizations. An example is shown through the Louis L. and Julia Dorothy Coover Charitable Foundation, which distributed more than $53,000 in 2022 to improve the services of senior centers in the affiliate’s footprint.

Another point of support is simply by providing an umbrella for local nonprofits. The OFRCF currently holds funds for nearly 20 organizations in the area, which support causes from history to health care.

This support extends to new nonprofit groups as they wait for federal approval on their charitable status. By establishing a fund with the ORFCF and the Community Foundation of the Ozarks, nonprofit startups can use the CFO’s 501(c)3 status to receive charitable gifts until they secure their own.

That was the case for Friends of the Carter County Courthouse, whose members are working to restore and transform the county’s former cobblestone courthouse in Van Buren into a welcome center.

“We were not a 501(c)3 when we started our fund, and we were trying to solicit donations,” says Pacheco, who serves as president of the courthouse’s friends’ group. “(Being affiliated with the CFO) was very helpful in our initial getting off the ground and collecting donations in the community. It also made us a little bit more trustworthy, I think, when we were a young, all-volunteer board. To be affiliated with the CFO gave us some legitimacy when we started approaching people.”

Those services are something which board members would like to help spread the word.

“I think it’s important that we let people know what it is,” says Ryan Ainley, who recently joined the board. He became acquainted with its work after his family began the Reese Ainley Foundation in memory of his daughter. “First and foremost, what it is and who it’s for, and then what can it help you accomplish.”

In their own words

Why do you serve?

By Kaitlyn McConnell, writer in residence for the Community Foundation of the Ozarks

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