Community fundraising
Members from the Whitefish Animal Group Wendy Coyne, Barbara Morris, Mas Perkins Joni Aronson and WAG President Jim Lockwood received the Great Fish award and a $5,000 grant as part of the Whitefish Community Foundation’s Great Fish Community Challenge Thursday during an awards ceremony at Casey’s. (Daniel McKay photos/Whitefish Pilot)
Colleen Unterreiner and Jill Seigmund of Flathead Valley Community College receive their matching grant at the Great Fish Community Challenge Awards on Thursday. (Daniel McKay/Whitefish Pilot)
North Valley Music School Director Deidre Corson celebrates after receiving the nonprofit's match grant as part of the Great Fish Community Challenge.
Wendy Coyne of Whitefish Animal Group reacts after receiving the Great Fish Award and a $5,000 grant as part of the Great Fish Community Challenge. (Daniel McKay/Whitefish Pilot)
Hillary Shaw performs her winning jingle at the Great Fish Community Challenge Awards on Thursday. (Daniel McKay/Whitefish Pilot)
The Whitefish Community Foundation stepped up the giving once again this year, distributing more than $2 million to local nonprofits in the conclusion of this year’s Great Fish Community Challenge.
The challenge received 3,939 contributions for roughly $1.6 million in its third year. The final percentage match came out to 48 percent, about $407,000, and was announced during the Great Fish awards event last week at Casey’s downtown.
The match was applied to the first $20,000 raised by nonprofits, with those meeting that fundraising mark receiving a maximum matching grant of $9,600. Nearly all of the nonprofits received the maximum matching grant.
Linda Engh-Grady, foundation president, said nonprofits continued events during the final weeks of the campaign as wildfire smoke seeped into Whitefish this summer.
“Despite the smoke, we never lost spirit,” she said. “We kept the campaign going and had great results. If you look at what we raised, $1.6 million for nonprofits — that’s a drop in the bucket. It’s pretty great.”
Forty-five nonprofits took part in this year’s challenge. Grants were presented to each organization Thursday evening.
Whitefish Animal Group, which has developed the Hugh Rogers WAG Park along with the city of Whitefish, was the recipient of this year’s Great Fish Award, which is presented to a nonprofit for exhibiting outstanding participation in all areas of the challenge. Along with their match, WAG received an additional $5,000 for the award.
The six-acre WAG Park opened in June 2009. The Whitefish Animal Group has worked through fundraising and volunteer efforts to develop the park into a “recreational mecca for pooches and people.”
Through donations spearheaded by WAG, the park on East Second Street features a fully accessible paved paths, benches, a drinking fountain for dogs and people, community pavilion, small dog area, agility course, pond and dog beach, dog wash station and trees.
The Abbie Shelter also received a $1,000 grant for winning the inaugural Great Fish Jingle Contest. Hillary Shaw, executive director of the organization that provides emergency shelter for women and their children, performed the jingle “Helping Our Community to Run” at the awards presentation.
Throughout the challenge, the foundation also offered incentive grants to nonprofits totaling over $15,500. The bonus grants helped to increase the urgency of donors to give to participating nonprofits and in many cases encouraged donors to give again.
This year’s total amount raised by nonprofits surpasses the 2016 total by more than $430,000 and set a new high in the challenge’s third year.
The Whitefish Community Foundation organizes the annual campaign free of charge for participating nonprofits. The cost of the 2017 campaign exceeded $100,000, which was covered by the foundation to ensure that 100 percent of the donations go to the designated charities.
“In our third year, the Great Fish Challenge is up over 28 percent from last year with 45 charitable organizations participating,” Board Chair Ken Wessels said in a release. “Total giving in just three years of the challenge exceeds $4.5 million. We look forward to continuing our work to help more local nonprofits with a successful 2018 Great Fish event.”
The Whitefish Community Foundation organizes the Great Fish Community Challenge. For complete campaign details and how much each nonprofit was awarded in the Challenge visit the Whitefish Community Foundation website at www.whitefishcommunityfoundation.org.