For the 8th time, the Children’s Forum will examine the condition of children, families and our community. The Forum begins at 8:30 AM, April 12 at the William A. Grant Water & Environmental Center at the Community College. Seating is limited. Contact Teri Barila for more information.
In addition to a review of a comprehensive data book on community health indicators, the Forum will discuss community wide initiatives to improve conditions for local children and families.
Sector Leaders Tell Lawmakers Limits, Caps Not a Solution to Fiscal Crisis
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Millions of people throughout America are at risk of losing crucial nonprofit services if Congress enacts limits to the century-old charitable tax deduction. Hundreds of foundation and philanthropic leaders are in Washington, D.C. this week to make sure lawmakers understand that unraveling the charitable deduction is not a solution to the budget crisis.
The timing is key as Congress and the president tackle deficit reduction and tax reform. The House and Senate both released their budget plans last week and the proposed Senate budget suggests limits to itemized deductions – one of which is the charitable deduction – putting at risk billions of dollars in charitable donations.
“The charitable deduction is unlike anything else in our tax code, encouraging people to invest in their communities without personal gain,” said Kevin Murphy, president of the Berks County Community Foundation in Pennsylvania and board chair of the Council on Foundations. “Limiting the charitable deduction would have the greatest impact on those who need the most help, especially during tough economic times. How could we possibly limit or tamper with incentives that allow people to give away their income to benefit others?”
Foundations on the Hill is an annual event sponsored by the Council on Foundations, the Alliance for Charitable Reform and the Forum of Regional Associations of Grantmakers. It brings together hundreds of leaders from community organizations to make sure elected officials clearly understand the inextricable link between charitable giving and thriving communities – from jobs and economic growth to spurring innovation and improving education and health to crisis relief, human services and more.
Gloria Johnson Cusack, executive director of Leadership 18, an alliance of CEOs leading America’s largest nonprofits, said, “I don’t believe any policymaker intends to undermine charities. But the fact is that major decisions about a range of issues are going to be made very quickly behind closed doors in this unusual legislative environment. That’s why we have to act now to make sure lawmakers understand that giving will go down significantly if they change good, existing policy that incentivizes people to support communities. We know policymakers face tough decisions, but now is not the time to experiment with the charitable deduction. The burden falls on nonprofit organizations and the people they serve.”
Michael Litz, president and CEO of the Forum of Regional Associations of Grantmakers, said, “Philanthropy is an independent, innovative investment for improving our communities and it needs to be preserved, recognized as different, and encouraged, now more than ever. It is critical that we educate members of Congress about how philanthropic innovation tackles society’s greatest challenges and benefits their constituents – by educating children, improving lives, revitalizing neighborhoods and strengthening communities.”
Lawson Knight, executive director of the Blue Mountain Community Foundation Washington state, said, “Giving to others sustains positive change where I live. In our area, charitable giving resurrected a local theater, renewed a downtown, built parks, provided swimming lessons for children and scholarships for aspiring college graduates. Giving is not simply a luxury afforded to those taking a charitable deduction. It is central to the American experience. It is essential that it remain so.”
“When it comes to who benefits from the charitable deduction, we think of people in need, not donors who take a deduction,” said Peter Bird, president of the Frist Foundation in Nashville, Tennessee. “Those who benefit from our grants range from families seeking health care and job opportunities to Alzheimer’s patients and their loved ones. When you think about revenue, tax reform, deductions and exclusions, think about how all of that would impact the way we care for each other.”
###
The Council on Foundations, formed in 1949, is a nonprofit membership association of grantmaking foundations and corporations. Members of the Council include more than 1,700 independent, operating, community, public and company-sponsored foundations, and corporate giving programs in the United States and abroad. The Council’s mission is to provide the opportunity, leadership, and tools needed by philanthropic organizations to expand, enhance, and sustain their ability to advance the common good. www.cof.org
The Alliance for Charitable Reform (ACR) works to advance the principles that promote vigorous private giving to charities and to preserve the rights of these donors. A project of The Philanthropy Roundtable, ACR educates legislators and policymakers about the central role of private giving in American life and thus the importance of protecting philanthropic freedom—the ability of individuals and private organizations to determine how and where to direct their charitable assets. ACR seeks to prevent policies that would diminish private giving, limit the diversity of charitable causes Americans support, or place undue government regulations on philanthropic organizations at both the federal and state level. www.acreform.com
The Forum of Regional Associations of Grantmakers (the Forum) is the national philanthropic federation and network of 34 regional associations of grantmakers serving nearly 5500 grantmaking entities and funder collaboratives. The mission of the Forum network is to connect and support regional associations — in ways that expand their capacity to lead, add value to their members, and strengthen philanthropy in their regions — and to bring the knowledge and experience of the regional associations into the national conversation on philanthropy. www.givingforum.org
December 17, 2012 marked the start of something new for Blue Mountain Community Foundation: our first online giving campaign. With this new effort, we are trying to specifically seek support for the Foundation’s grantmaking program through Impact Funds.
An Impact Fund is to BMCF grantmaking as mutual funds are to investing. A mutual fund is a way to purchase with a single investment many underlying securities, like stocks. If you purchased a S&P 500 Stock Mutual Fund, your investment would own the 500 largest public companies in the United States.
If you had made a gift BMCF’s EDUCATION! Fund earlier in the year, your gift would have supported sixteen different nonprofit organizations in our region ranging from Blue Mountain Action Council’s Adult Literacy Program to the YWCA’s Mariposa Program.
There are seven different IMPACT! funds. You can see BMCF’s grants by Impact area, here.
So, how did we do launching our first campaign? Let’s look first to the media, from whom we had a lot of help. Lawson Knight, BMCF’s executive director appeared on KUJ radio’s Walla Walla Live with Jim Bock to start the day. The Walla Walla Union-Bulletin ran a front-page story about the campaign. Plus, KTEL and KWHT radio broadcast stories throughout the day.
Social media also helped. Foundation friends and supporters took to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to tell others about the campaign.
As a result, the Foundation had 547 page views on a Monday as the chart of hourly page views shows below. It usually takes two and a half weeks for the Foundation to have that many visits.
Now, it’s on to day two. Feel free to share our campaign with a friend. Consider joining us with a gift of your own.
Please join Michael Mettler of Achieva Marketing Group and Susan Newton of Development Strategies Plus in an interactive discussion about how social media can play a pivotal role in communications and outreach channels for your nonprofit organization.
Topics of discussion include:
The sessions will take place on Oct 16 & 17th at the Walla Walla Community College William A. Grant Water & Environmental Center. The session is repeated on the second day, so please register for the date most convenient for you.
Sessions are limited to 30 participants and pre-registration is required. Follow this link to the NPLC to register.
A fascinating new look at giving has been released by the Chronicle of Philanthropy, called How America Gives. It looks at “exact dollar amounts released by the Internal Revenue Service showing the value of charitable deductions claimed by American taxpayers.” Data comes from 2008 IRS tax information. Here is a look at Washington, and Walla Walla County in particular.
How does Walla Wallla stack up compared to the the state and nation? Amazingly and generously well! The following table compares Walla Walla County to the state and Country:
| United States | Washington | Walla Walla County | |
| Total Contributions | $135.8 B | $3 B | $22.1 M |
| Median Contribution | $2,564 | $2,319 | $3,610 |
| Median Discretionary Income | $54,783 | $56,282 | $45,311 |
| Percent of Income Given | 4.7% | 4.1% | 8.0% |
Walla Walla gives at rates nearly double the state average. Its median contribution exceeds the national median by 40% at the same time discretionary income is 17% less than the national median.
It has been a feeling that the Blue Mountain area is a generous place. Here is the data to back it up.
The map in blue shows total giving by county with the balloon detailing Walla Walla County. The darker the color, the more giving.
The orange map depicts median discretionary income in Washington. Again, the darker the image, the higher the median income. Walla Walla County detail is shown in the balloon. Discretionary income is a bit complicated.
For this study, The Chronicle started with adjusted gross income and subtracted federal income tax (less tax credits), Social Security and Medicare taxes, and state and local taxes. Also removed were median housing costs for homeowners and renters in each ZIP code as well as average living expenses from information collected by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and available by metropolitan area and region. The Chronicle applied those figures to ZIP codes that fall in the areas designated by the bureau.
The green map shows the median contribution in Washington. Put differently, it shows how much the middle person from the group of tax returns actually gave to charity. The darker the image, the higher the contribution level. Walla Walla County detailed is shown in the balloon.
The final map shows the percentage of income given by households, by county.
All data and maps courtesy of How America Gives from The Chronicle of Philanthropy.
A $165,500 fund to protect wildlife habitat in Garfield County has been created under an agreement between Puget Sound Energy, Garfield County and the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. The endowment, administered by Blue Mountain Community Foundation, is called the Puget Sound Energy Lower Snake River Wind Habitat Project Fund.
Establishment of a long-term fund to preserve and enhance wildlife habitat is the brainchild of Grant Morgan, public works director for Garfield County. Morgan saw the fund as an opportunity to create an enduring asset for Garfield County – not unlike PSE’s new Lower Snake River Wind Facility. Anne Walsh, PSE’s senior environmental and communications manager in Southeast Washington, suggested that Blue Mountain Community Foundation manage the fund. The 2009 WDFW Wind Power Guidelines provided the framework to develop the mitigation strategy that ultimately resulted in the Puget Sound Energy Lower Snake River Wind Habitat Project Fund.
“By using mitigation funds from PSE’s Lower Snake River facility for an endowment,” Walsh said, “we can support environmental projects over the life of the wind project and beyond.”
The habitat endowment is designed to provide grants to local projects in Garfield County for the benefit of wildlife and the county’s citizens. Blue Mountain Community Foundation will invest and administer the fund.
The primary purpose of grants will be for stewardship—management, monitoring, restoration, enhancement, protection from degradation—of high-value habitat in Garfield County. Environmental mitigation for large construction projects traditionally involves a one-time investment, such as acquisition and preservation of an environmentally sensitive tract of land. Never before had the Department of Fish and Wildlife seen mitigation take the form of a long-term endowment.
“During my tenure, this is the most novel and innovative approach to using mitigation funds,” said Mike Ritter, WDFW Mitigation Biologist. “WDFW’s mission is to preserve, protect and perpetuate ecosystems. With an endowment, we have created a way to conserve habitat for generations in Garfield County.”
“Blue Mountain Community Foundation is delighted about this fund for a couple of reasons,” noted Foundation Executive Director Lawson Knight. “We say we serve Garfield County and this fund joins others that benefit Garfield County and demonstrate our commitment to serving the County. Another reason is we invest for a Healthy Community, which includes the environment. This is the most significant fund for the environment in the Foundation’s history.”
The Fund’s executive committee, composed of representatives from Puget Sound Energy, the Garfield County Board of Commissioners, and the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, is developing grant guidelines and will seek project proposals. A project committee, including executive committee members along with a representative from a wildlife-oriented organization and an at-large member, will review grant requests and select recipients.
###
Washington state’s oldest local energy utility, Puget Sound Energy serves 1.1 million electric customers and more than 750,000 natural gas customers in 11 counties. A subsidiary of Puget Energy, PSE meets the energy needs of its customers, in part, through cost-effective energy efficiency, procurement of sustainable energy resources, and far-sighted investment in the energy-delivery infrastructure. PSE employees are dedicated to providing great customer service that is safe, dependable and efficient. For more information, visit www.PSE.com.
Garfield County is located in southeastern Washington with the Snake River Canyon in places descending well over 1,000 feet to the river. The Oregon state line marks Garfield County’s southern border with elevations rising to the Blue Mountains. Agriculture has dominated Garfield County’s economy with farms occupying two-thirds of the county. Wheat is the main crop, though other grains such as barley and bluegrass are also grown. Now, the County has begun harvesting wind. At 712.80 square miles which encompasses a portion of the Umatilla National Forest, Garfield County is the seventh-smallest county in the state. As of 2000, the population is 2397, making it the least populous in the state. The county seat is at Pomeroy, the county’s only city.
Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife mission is to preserve, protect and perpetuate fish, wildlife and ecosystems while providing sustainable fish and wildlife recreational and commercial opportunities. With six regional offices spread across Washington State, the Region 1 office (Spokane) is responsible for conservation and protection of native fish and wildlife in Eastern Washington State, including Garfield County as well as providing sustainable fishing, hunting and other wildlife-related recreational experiences.
Since 1984, the Blue Mountain Community Foundation has served donors who care about Blue Mountain area communities, including Washington’s Garfield, Columbia and Garfield Counties, as well as the Northeast section of Umatilla County in Oregon. Through this generosity, BMCF grants in excess of $1.6 Million each year. It has grown to over $30M in assets in 250 component funds. Several Foundation funds benefit Garfield County including the Lawrence and Margaret Slater Scholarship Fund for Pomeroy High School graduates and the Garfield County Health Foundation Fund.
Blue Mountain Community Foundation welcomes you to its 2012-13 Grant Year. It is our goal to make the grant application process easy for the grant seeker and also greener for our environment, requiring much less paperwork. Please read the Guidelines for Grant Applications carefully before submitting an application to determine if your organization is eligible and if the Foundation’s funding timeline suits the needs of your program.
Submit the following items to Blue Mountain Community Foundation by JULY 2, 2012:
Do not use a binder. Staple each application and program/project description sheet together in the upper-left hand corner. Upon review of your submission, BMCF may request additional information, including but not limited to financial statements, project budgets and a list of members of your governing board.
All grant applications must be postmarked or received in the BMCF office at 8 South 2nd Avenue, Suite 618, Walla Walla, WA 99362, by JULY 2, 2012
Grant awards will be announced at the Foundation’s annual meeting in October, 2012. Declined proposals will be notified in writing by or before the annual meeting.
Blue Mountain Community Foundation recently awarded grants from the First FruitsFund, a component fund of BMCF. As promised we will be announcing recent grant awards over the next few weeks.
The Blue Mountain Community Foundation’s service area includes all of Walla Walla County. Historically, the Foundation’s grantmaking has not reached the banks of the Columbia and Snake Rivers, specifically Burbank.
To understand why I visited Burbank to learn about its nonprofit sector, which might be traditionally defined by 501(c)3 public charities. In reality, there are few charities in Burbank. Most are 4-H clubs and churches.
Even though there are no public charities based in Burbank that, in my judgement, meet the guidelines of the First Fruits Fund, there most certainly are people and institutions that do. My outreach took me to the office of Columbia Elementary School Principal, Ian Yale.
It doesn’t take long to see that Ian knows his children, families and community. As a staff, the Columbia School District struggles to meet the needs of children that extend beyond the classroom to categories like mental health and hunger. But, they do. The limits to their efforts right now are bounded only by financial resources not effort or resourcefulness.
This grant takes a step to empower district leadership to help their students in ways they see fit. It will be exciting and fun to learn from their experience. I expect to see remarkable ingenuity and innovation in the use of these resources. The grant from the First Fruits Fund of $10,000 is to support students at the discretion of the Columbia School District Administrative Leadership Team.
2012 First Fruits Grantees:Blue Mountain Community Foundation recently awarded grants from the First Fruits Fund, a component fund of BMCF. As promised we will be announcing recent grant awards over the next few weeks.
Trilogy is a community dedicated to walking alongside youth who are struggling to overcome alcohol or other drug problems while also supporting their families. Trilogy makes recovery a reality by providing comprehensive recovery support services free of charge to anyone in need. Founded in 2003 by nationally-renowned author on addiction, Kathy Ketcham, Trilogy is a member of the national Association of Recovery Community Organizations (ARCO) and an affiliate of the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence (NCADD). A film about their work, The Missing Piece, can be found here.
Trilogy provides a sanctuary for youth and families who often feel they have nowhere else to go. Trilogy is dedicated to identifying gaps in services, educating our citizens about adolescent drug use and addiction, supporting family members and giving young people the help – and the hope — they need to lead healthy, productive lives.
Trilogy’s programs include:
In September 2011, Trilogy moved into its new “home,” a house leased from Providence/St. Mary Medical Center for a $1 per year and refurbished with the leadership of Opp & Seibold construction.
The grant from the First Fruits Fund of $7,500 is for general support.
The First Fruits Fund was established in 2008 with a generous grant from the Vista Hermosa Foundation. Since that time, the Fund has made 66 grants exceeding $550,000.
The stated goal of the First Fruits Fund is to “encourage collaborative and innovative approaches to building self-sufficiency for the most under-served in our communities, including improved access to such basic needs as housing, food, education and livable wages.” Founders believe that the most impactful way to achieve that goal is to support community-based initiatives that empower people themselves to identify their needs and collectively own the process of change.
2012 First Fruits Grantees:
The Board of Directors of Blue Mountain Heart to Heart created an endowment for the first time in the organization’s history. In making the choice, the Board looked to partner with an organization for support and management, selecting Blue Mountain Community Foundation.
“This celebrates our 20 year history serving the Walla Walla Valley,” said Board President Oliver von Birkenwaldau. “And, our continued commitment to serve at-risk and vulnerable populations in the region for another 20 years. We are proud to work with such a respected institution to help establish a long-term fund in our own community,” stated Acting Executive Director Everett Maroon.
For the Blue Mountain Community Foundation’s part, Executive Director Lawson Knight shared, “it is gratifying whenever one of our nonprofit peers chooses to work with us. We believe we have a fine endowment program and an easy-to-implement method for local nonprofits to manage their endowment. The Foundation has been supporting the work of Blue Mountain Heart to Heart for many years through its grants program. Now, we have one more way that we are helping advance their mission.”
Blue Mountain Heart to Heart’s mission is to prevent new HIV and Hepatitis C infections & provide compassionate care and assistance for those infected and affected by these diseases and to encourage an environment of dignity and improved quality of life for the entire community. It has been active in this work since 1991. To learn more, visit www.bluemountainheart.org. Contributions to the Blue Mountain Heart to Heart Endowment Fund are tax-deductible and may be made directly to either organization.
Blue Mountain Community Foundation is a collection of charitable funds that awards grants and scholarships across the Blue Mountain area. Of the 266 funds held at the Foundation, 64 are agency funds like the one created by Blue Mountain Heart to Heart. Last fiscal year the Foundation eclipsed $30 Million in assets and nearly $2 Million in grants and scholarships.
Blue Mountain Community Foundation, P.O. Box 603, Walla Walla, Washington 99362 509-529-4371 Fax: 509-529-5284
© 2006-2011 Blue Mountain Community Foundation | Design : Morrison Griffith Design Partners