These reflections on 2023 are featured in our latest annual report. You can explore the full report here.

From our President and Board Chair

In 2023, we awarded $8.6 million in grants, gave scholarships to 327 students, and issued $5.1 million in impact investments. We also launched the Newaygo County Housing Partnership Fund to support housing creation. Grants from the fund have allowed recipients to leverage nearly $9 million in total project investments so far.

Along with the successes of 2023, we also experienced the loss of our friend Mary Rangel. Mary served on our Board of Trustees for nine years and chaired our Poverty to Prosperity Committee. Her legacy will live on through her family, her endowment fund, the many people she helped, and the lessons we learned from her about exercising compassion, optimism, and dedication.

It is partners like Mary—and people like you—who shape our work. By partnering closely with donors and organizations, we can proactively find solutions and take courageous action. Money alone will never solve problems. We must work together and recognize that it is often small steps that truly create a brighter future.

We hope you enjoy this annual report and that it sparks ideas for ways we can partner in the year ahead. Thank you for your philanthropy through volunteering, acts of kindness, donating to causes you care most about, and helping lead change. You make all the difference.

Shelly Kasprzycki, President and CEO
Lori Tubbergen Clark, PhD, 2023 Board Chair

You may have heard of an opportunity through the Community Foundation called impact investing. If you are anything like me, when you first heard it, you probably had a lot of questions about what this is and does it change the way the Community Foundation does its work. The answers to those questions are yes and no.

Impact investing, in its simple form, is purposefully making investments that help provide social impacts that benefit our communities. Now you may be asking, what does that mean? The Community Foundation makes investments of our asset base to continue to grow our endowment. Impact investing allows us to do this locally. We work with local businesses, nonprofits, and government agencies to invest in projects across Newaygo, Lake, Mecosta, and Osceola counties. As the investments we provide are completed, they are paid back to the Community Foundation to allow us to do more projects in the future.

The opportunity that impact investing provides allows us to have a broader range of impact in our communities by supporting not only our nonprofits and government entities, but sometimes our local businesses as well. We can generate financial returns while also creating positive social change on a local basis across our communities. The Community Foundation uses its strategic goals around strengthening capacity for people and communities to determine the social impact of a project and engages with our donors to provide impact investment opportunities.

Impact investing consists of a few different opportunities, including working with Northern Initiatives, program-related investments or mission-related investments, or small business loans in partnership with Michigan State University Federal Credit Union. Through these investments, we have supported over $9 million in our communities. Some of these projects include 911 equipment for Central Dispatch in Newaygo County, broadband expansion with Great Lakes Energy, and affordable housing opportunities with various developers.

For more information on our impact investments, contact Maria E. Gonzalez at the Community Foundation at 231.924.5350.

 

 

The application period for grants from the Ice Mountain Environmental Stewardship Fund is now open. Completed applications are due by July 15.

Grant requests are accepted online for projects or programs that conserve, enhance, or restore the Muskegon River Watershed and demonstrate collaboration among organizations. Projects considered for grants must be located within the Muskegon River Watershed, which is one of Michigan’s largest and spans 2,700 square miles from near Higgins and Houghton lakes to Muskegon.

The Ice Mountain Environmental Stewardship Fund was established at Fremont Area Community Foundation in 2002 by what is now BlueTriton Brands. In 2018, Ice Mountain renewed its support with a $2 million commitment over the next 20+ years.

Grants are made from the fund to sustain the waters and water-dependent natural resources of the Muskegon River Watershed by supporting conservation, enhancement, and restoration projects. The fund provides up to $50,000 annually and typical grants are from $5,000 to $20,000. In 2023, grants from the fund supported trail and bridge construction on Michigan’s Dragon Trail, hazardous waste collection, tree planting for stream bank stabilization, and more.

For more information or to begin an online grant application, visit facommunityfoundation.org/icemountain. Applications can be submitted June 1 through July 15.