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First ever gifts to Impact! Funds!

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by Mari Sanders,
Assistant Director of Donor Services

I did some filing today. Now normally I couldn’t admit getting excited about filing, but today was a different story.

Here at the Foundation we have files for each of our funds where we file deposit slips and any fund specific documents. Today I am proud to say that I filed the first ever deposit slips for our Impact! Funds.

Why is this exciting you ask? Because these were the first ever gifts to our Impact! Funds. These gifts go directly into our grants program! Direct to local non-profits!

The Foundation categorizes all of our grants by Impact! area, for example Arts or Education. A gift to an Impact! Fund is a way that you could make a gift to an array of local non-profits, knowing that BMCF is evaluating grant requests and grants are being made to support work that is valuable to our communities.

If you’d like to make a gift to an Impact! Fund, click here. There’s still time to avoid some taxes and also to make a positive impact on the communities you care about. And also to make me a smile the next time I get to file gifts to Impact! Funds!

To read more about Impact! Funds and our 2012 grantees click here.

Make a gift. Make an Impact. Reviewing the first day of our first ever online giving campaign

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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.

Giving continues!

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 Our year-end giving campaign continues! 

This year give a gift that continues giving throughout the year. Join us in making a gift to a Blue Mountain Community Foundation Impact! Fund. Your gift will go directly to local non-profits working to strengthen our communities.

Give at www.bluemountainfoundation.org/impact 

Lawson Knight on KUJ

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Lawson will be on KUJ Monday morning at 7:30 a.m. visiting with Jim Bock to talk about the first ever Blue Mountain Community Foundation year-end giving campaign. Tune in at 1420 a.m. to listen in and learn about how you can make an Impact! on your community this Holiday Season.

Congratulations to Sandy Flores!

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Blue Mountain Community Foundation is proud to be a small part of the success of Sandy Flores, the first Latina to be sworn into the the bar locally.

Sandy’s inspiring story was recently featured in the Union Bulletin. Sandy received a total of $17, 500 in scholarships from BMCF over the course of her education including scholarships from the John W. McGillis Scholarship Fund and the Roberta Bell Kraemer Scholarship Fund.

The Blue Mountain Community Foundation Scholarship program awarded over $370,000 in scholarships in 2012. Scholarships applications will be available beginning January 1, 2013 and awards will be announced in the Spring.

For more information please visit our website.