With a great year ahead, take a moment to glance at the year behind:

For several years, we have been actively building our local community funds. Last year, we received several significant donations to these funds from community-minded donors. We received our first end-of-life donation from Michelle Alford of Glenwood Springs. She directed this to their local community fund, the Two Rivers Unrestricted Endowment Fund. 2019 was also the organizing year for our newest local community fund: the Surface Creek Community Fund for Cedaredge and the surrounding communities launched formally in early 2020.

Our Community Foundation is also very committed to building permanent funds for targeted issue areas. For instance, we have the honor of addressing hunger, housing, and substance abuse . In 2019, several new field-of-interest funds came on line: the Trutta Fund provided $70,000 to organizations providing services to veterans and their families; a suicide prevention fund made its first round of grants; the Bray Cares Foundation vetted applications for housing related needs in Mesa County; and our new CORE Fund starting funding conservation, outdoor recreation and environment projects.

In 2020, we will begin making grants from new field-of-interest funds for domestic violence programs, arts/culture/literacy, and animal care, funded by a generous legacy donation from Evelyn Haley.

These issue-focused grant funds are important for us to build, as they provide flexible funding to meet current and emerging needs in our community.

Read the rest of our newsletter here.