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We are pleased to announce the first two rounds of grants from the Community Stabilization Fund in 2021. The decision was made to continue the Community Stabilization Fund for at least the first six months of this year in response to feedback from nonprofit partners, community leaders, and individuals being directly impacted. The CFHZ Board of Trustees approved an additional $225,000 from our Community’s Endowment resources to be allocated through the Community Stabilization Fund. In addition, generous donors have continued to make contributions to the fund, allowing us to grow our impact. Grants made from the Community Stabilization Fund continue to focus on the three areas of impact from 2020: financial stability, health, and education, and a fourth area of impact added in 2021: public health.
$50,000 to continue the Eviction Diversion Program
Funds from the Community Stabilization Fund will assist GSM in adding staffing capacity and appropriate workspace to ensure they can provide holistic support during intake and aftercare for new clients in the Eviction Diversion Program. Last year, GSM leveraged $150,000 from the Stabilization Fund to unlock $1.5M in federal dollars for an Eviction Diversion Program which allowed them to empower 487 families to remain in their homes. In 2021, they have an opportunity to receive an additional $9M to continue this work and keep over 2,000 families in their homes.
$15,000 to increase the amount of food secured through ‘food rescue’
Funds from the Community Stabilization Fund will help CAH procure the required equipment to increase their food rescue efforts by an estimated 17,500 pounds of food every month. Having healthy, high quality food available to members of our community is a need CAH has prioritized, especially as demand for food assistance has increased exponentially since last year. Food “rescued” from local grocery stores (items tagged by the store to be disposed of that are not expired/damaged) is a highly efficient way to include produce and other perishables in to-go meals and boxed food assistance.
$10,000 for outreach and application assistance for the Employee Assistance Program
The EAP provided financial assistance to people whose employment was negatively impacted by the closure of restaurants for indoor dining, gyms, theaters, and other businesses that occurred in the last several months of 2020. With a short window of time for eligible individuals to apply for this support, this grant provided resources to launch local communications and publicity efforts including a local website, translate materials about the program into Spanish and other languages as needed, and provide in- person support in completing the application from trained staff at our local libraries for those who did not have access to internet or a computer elsewhere.
$40,000 to ODC Network to launch Project 180 in partnership with the OAISD and our local school districts (Holland, West Ottawa and Zeeland)
Funds from the Community Stabilization Fund will assist in the launch of Project 180, a new nature-based summer education program that will directly target access and opportunity for families that have been disproportionally affected by the major changes to schooling because of COVID-19. The target populations for this program often face several barriers to participation in summer learning opportunities including costs, transportation and relationships with host entities. ODC recognizes these barriers and is committed to working closely with districts to provide transportation for programming offered. Project 180 will serve Pre-K through 5th grade students, their caregivers, and school partners in Ottawa and Allegan Counties primarily located in the Holland/Zeeland area, applying a multi-pronged approach to engaging families.
$19,080 for increasing Power Hour Capacity and student transportation
Funds from the Community Stabilization Fund will increase capacity for Power Hour, a program that provides daily homework help for children from 1st to 12th grade. It will also help BGC to continue providing the transportation that is critical for students in need of this support to access the program.
$17,800 to launch the Summer Bridge program and provide in-house Mental Health and Substance Abuse Counseling
Funds from the Community Stabilization Fund will help launch the Summer Bridge program, a new 6-week course for rising 9th graders whose grades, behavior, attendance, and/or social/emotional skills leave them vulnerable to 9th grade class failure. This program walks alongside students in a deeper way, meeting their needs with additional support and attention. Funds will also help provide in-house Mental Health and Substance Use Counseling to ensure earlier, more consistent, and more accessible mental health services. The program’s “Life Coach” already has established relationships with students served, will begin working on a regular basis with Escape this spring through the summer, offering continued supports while creating space for Escape to envision the best ways to integrate mental health care into all aspects of Escape programming.
($7,500 each)
Immigrant Relief Fund and Grand Rapids Asian Pacific Festival
($5,000 each)
Ensuring equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines
Funds from the Community Stabilization Fund will support strategic efforts to reach residents of the Holland/Zeeland area who were disproportionately impacted by COVID-19 and experience barriers to access vaccines, thus most at risk of having a disproportionately low vaccination rate—specifically Seniors and Black, Indigenous, and community members of color. Multiple conversations with community partners leading these efforts have highlighted several barriers to accessing the vaccine: technology, language, and trust in the location of vaccine distribution. Partners receiving funding have been actively engaged in outreach and education, often going above and beyond their scope of work to reach out to community members, answer questions, get them scheduled for an appointment, and call with reminders and additional appointment details.
We are pleased to announce the first and second round of grant distributions from the Community Stabilization Fund. Our efforts are designed to act swiftly, be flexible as new information emerges, and take into account the range of other supports that have come into our community from both public and private sources. The Community Stabilization Fund targets three priority areas that were identified in conversations with local nonprofit partners: financial stability, health, and education. To date, $950,000 has been committed to the fund! This includes a $200,000 investment from the Community’s Endowment combined with generous gifts from local donors.
The first round of grant distributions, made in June, focused on the priority area of financial stability. A total of $115,000 was invested to launch the Greater Holland/Zeeland Area Direct Cash Assistance Program. This effort provides $500 emergency unrestricted cash relief to eligible local individuals who have lost their jobs or are experiencing significantly reduced hours of paid work due to the COVID-19 crisis.
Since the start of the pandemic, various federal stimulus bills have transferred funds to people who have lost their jobs, and to lower/middle income families in general; but there are individuals and families in our community who haven't yet received those funds, or may not be eligible to receive them. These friends and neighbors are struggling to meet their basic day-to-day needs.
CFHZ and some of our generous donors, alongside key community organizations who serve these populations, explored a variety of options to assist those who are falling through the cracks of our existing support systems. Collectively, we identified a direct-cash assistance program, partnering with a national organization called Family Independence Initiative (FII), as a key strategy to serve our vulnerable community members. We granted $100,000 to FII to establish the program, and an additional $5,000 each to our core partner agencies for administrative support to implement the program. We're delighted to share that generous local donors contributed an additional $500,000 for a total cash assistance funding pool of $600,000!
We have partnered with three local organizations who will identify those individuals who quality for the program: Community Action House, Good Samaritan Ministries, and Movement West Michigan. Each of these partners has further engaged their network of partner churches, grassroots organizations, and neighborhood community organizations to extend their reach to as many families as possible.
To be eligible for the Greater Holland/Zeeland Area Direct Cash Assistance Program, individuals must:
To date, the Direct Cash Assistance Program has directly impacted 600 individuals. We're deeply thankful to the generous local donors who have contributed towards these efforts.
Good Samaritan Ministries recently received funds from the Michigan State Housing Development Authority (MSHDA) to launch a six-month Eviction Diversion Program which will use a collaborative court process model, bringing together the courts, Legal Aid, mediation, tenants and landlords to provide lump sum payments to landlords in exchange for allowing tenants to remain in their homes. The Community Stabilization Fund grant will support GSM’s efforts to scale up capacity and ensure robust program delivery and services to divert hundreds of families from potential homelessness and provide a path back towards thriving in our community.
This grant will support ODC Network’s partnership with the Ottawa Area Intermediate School District and Holland/Zeeland area districts to provide schools and teachers with support, resources, and training on activating outdoor spaces and utilizing outdoor learning as a means to lower school building population density and increase social distancing while providing safe, meaningful, and engaging learning experiences for students. This effort will increase the chances of more children being able to safely attend school in person, which is beneficial for all children’s learning, but especially for those children who were already struggling in school and who likely experienced even greater learning loss due to the remote learning transition last spring followed by summer break.
Ready for School, in partnership with area schools, rapidly adapted their highly successful kindergarten readiness program to offer the four-week experience in a modified format this summer. Given the unique challenges facing this year’s incoming kindergartners and their families, this grant will support continuing the program into the fall to complement and enhance whatever format in which schools are able to provide kindergarten. How well this critical first year of school goes for these students will have a long-lasting impact on the trajectory of their learning and this investment will help ensure they have the strongest kindergarten experience possible in an inherently difficult environment.
CASA provides elementary school students who are struggling academically with a structured educational support program to achieve their learning goals. CASA pivoted quickly this summer to continue providing students robust learning opportunities in an effective and meaningful way despite new constraints. This grant will invest in the follow-up effort to re-imagine what Fall CASA programming looks like, particularly as the organization works to incorporate Hope College Education Department students who typically serve as one-on-one tutors during the school year in a new format.
This grant will allow Family Hope Foundation to expand their therapy scholarship program for Holland/Zeeland area children with special needs and learning disabilities to help them regain progress and milestones lost due to recent interruptions to schooling and support services. The program works collaboratively with a broad network of providers to find customized supports that will best serve each individual student’s needs.
We are pleased to announce the third round of grant distributions from the Community Stabilization Fund. An initial investment of $200,000 from our Community's Endowment, combined with the generous investments of local donors, allows us to assist in setting the stage for recovery from the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Community Stabilization Fund targets three priority areas that were identified in conversations with local nonprofit partners: financial stability, health, and education. To date, grant distributions have been made for each priority area. We anticipate funding organizations working in each priority area one more time before the close of 2020.
The primary goal of this grant round was scaling up existing mental health and substance abuse providers to be able to serve more people and reach different audiences. We are fortunate that many efforts to expand mental health services were already well underway prior to the COVID-19 Pandemic and we have numerous community partners providing great services in this space. Given these factors, the Community Stabilization Fund made several investments, as compared to one or two larger investments, to scale up services with multiple nonprofit partners. We have prioritized programs with the capacity to quickly translate dollars from the Fund into increased services for community members in need. A total of $135,000 was granted to six local organizations.
This funding will assist OAR with hiring an additional Masters-level clinician, which will increase their ability to provide outpatient addiction treatment by at least 250 additional individuals over the course of a year.
This funding will support increasing the hours of HFHC’s Mental Health Program Specialist staff member, who is a Certified Alcohol and Drug Counselor, and continuing additional hours for their contracted licensed counselor. Combined, this will increase both the number of clients served and types of services offered through HFHC’s mental health and substance abuse programs. HFHC will have capacity to serve approximately 30 additional new clients, a sixty percent increase from their current capacity of 50.
This funding will help COAHM Health Clinic increase hours of their current counseling staff to immediately begin serving at least 10 more individuals per week for traditional counseling. The program currently has capacity for 23 individuals at a time and COAHM staff report there is a rolling waitlist of approximately 10 people in need of counseling.
This funding will help ensure Mosaic is able to continue providing the School Outreach Program to Holland, West Ottawa, and Zeeland Public Schools students despite the uncertainty of schools’ ability to contribute financially at the same levels they have in the past for these services. The funding will also support Mosaic’s ability to roll out new virtual support services for students, teachers, and parents, many of whom are experiencing increased mental health concerns right now.
This funding will assist Boys and Girls Club (BGC) with adding two part-time Youth Service Assistants to work with the social worker on staff. The staff social worker is currently serving all three BGC sites, so this funding will allow for a dedicated staff member on-site at the southside and northside locations. The Youth Service Assistants will serve as point persons for coordinating counseling and mental health needs to make most strategic use of the social worker’s time and expertise. Combined, the three BCG locations serve nearly 1,800 children and teens, and 80% of club participants are children of color. Over 40% of club participants live in single parent households.
This funding will allow Beacon of Hope to increase hours for intake staff who field phone calls from people looking for help. Call volume has increased since the beginning of the pandemic, and connecting a potential client with a live person who can assess and triage their needs the first time they call is critical to ensuring that people receive the help they need during the window of opportunity when they are actively seeking it. Funding will also support Beacon of Hope’s counselors with additional training on best practices for telehealth counseling sessions and group therapy as they launched this option rapidly in the last few months.
We are pleased to share some exciting news about our Community Stabilization Fund. Recently, a select group of Herman Miller retirees approached CFHZ about providing a match to donations made to the fund up to $4,100. They also approached Herman Miller Cares who agreed to match another $5,000 in donations to the fund! Together, they will match any donations made by August 31 up to $9,100!
The idea was developed by Herman Miller retiree Joanie Reid, who said “I look at the very difficult current realities with eyes wide open, but want to avoid being immobilized by them, as I have sometimes been. We can act. We can make a difference. I know I can, and want, to do more to practice gratitude.”
Several of her fellow Herman Miller retirees joined her in matching gifts to the Community Stabilization Fund at CFHZ, including Tony Cortese, Deborah Exo, Deb Huizenga, Linda Milanowski, Jane Rohlck, Marty Ryan, Prescott Slee, Mike Swistak and Nelva Vogel. Inspired by the reaction of her peers, Joanie approached Herman Miller Cares and they enthusiastically offered to join in with another $5,000 toward the match.
Launched in May 2020, the Community Stabilization Fund is designed to set the stage for recovery from the far-reaching impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. The goal for the Community Stabilization Fund is to provide a vehicle for coordinated investments in our community on behalf of our Community’s Endowment resources and the resources of local individuals, families, and companies. The fund is designed to act swiftly, be flexible as new information emerges, and be targeted in its use across the various areas of need, taking into account the range of other supports that have come from public and private sources into our community. The fund focuses on three priority areas: financial stability, health, and education.
To date, $950,000 has been raised, including $200,000 of seed funding from our Community’s Endowment. The generous matching gift offer from the select group of Herman Miller retirees and Herman Miller Cares allows us to extend our reach as we work to help our community bounce forward from the challenges of recent months. We are so grateful for their investment in this work. Thank you, Herman Miller retirees and Herman Miller Cares!
Donate here (please be sure to write “Stabilization Community Match” in the comments section)
Learn more about the Community Stabilization Fund
Learn about our first and second ground grant distributions from the Community Stabilization Fund
We are pleased to announce the fifth round of grant distributions from the Community Stabilization Fund. An initial investment of $200,000 from our Community's Endowment, combined with the generous investments of local donors, allows us to assist in setting the stage for recovery from the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Community Stabilization Fund targets three priority areas that were identified in conversations with local nonprofit partners: financial stability, health, and education.
This month we re-visited and and completed our final round of funding for our Education strategy.
In preparation for this month’s grant round, our community impact staff met with a number of youth serving nonprofits as well as local school districts and the Ottawa Area Intermediate School District (OAISD). The Community Stabilization Fund awarded $150,000 to six organizations.
to increase support for remote learners
Amount awarded: $35,000
With three sites that together serve both the Holland and West Ottawa districts, BGC reaches the greatest number of students outside of the schools themselves and serves elementary, middle, and high school students. Their staff have strong existing relationships with students and parents and close partnerships with educators in the two districts in which they work. This funding will allow BGC to add staff capacity to expand their Power Hour program, where students come every day after school to receive academic support, to include daytime hours for youth who are attending school virtually. All three locations have expanded hours for in person 1:1 or small group tutoring.
The Bridge is focused on serving Zeeland students and like BGC, has strong existing relationships with students and parents and works closely with Zeeland Public Schools. They also facilitate the alternative suspension program for Zeeland students who have been suspended or expelled. This funding will enable The Bridge to expand their Bridge to Excellence mentoring program to accommodate a larger cross section of our educational community and serve home schoolers and online learners. The Bridge will increase staffing to provide consistent mentors for students to help them attain their goals academically, behaviorally, and socially.
Escape has a track record of earning trust and building relationships with some of our community’s most vulnerable youth who are at high risk of disengaging with school entirely. Holland and West Ottawa districts partner with Escape on their alternative suspension program which provides intensive support to students who are suspended or expelled. This funding will be used to expand staff hours and hire additional staff to support their Alternative Suspension Accountability Program (ASAP) and After School Tutoring program enabling them to expand hours and serve more students.
to launch a virtual 1:1 bilingual tutoring program
Amount awarded: $20,000
Another key demographic group that we heard from local educators needs targeted outreach and support are our English Language Learners (ELL students). To meet the unique needs of remote ELL students, Hope College in partnership with the OAISD will launch a virtual 1:1 bilingual tutoring program for students in Holland, Zeeland, and West Ottawa school districts. The joint effort will leverage the OAISD’s ability to work with schools to identify the students in greatest need of this service and match them with a Hope College student tutor who speaks their home language. This funding will help seed the initial launch of this new innovative program.
to adapt programming to virtual format
Amount awarded: $15,000
Step Up provides 1:1 academic mentoring to local middle school students. The program provides need-based instruction in math and reading to close the achievement gap. As of fall 2020, 100% of Step Up participants are underrepresented or come from economically disadvantaged households. Step Up is pivoting to a virtual format this semester while still seeking to deliver high quality tutoring and mentoring to the 45 students they serve. This funding will support Step Up’s ability to adapt their programming for virtual delivery.
to expand programming to meet demand
Amount awarded: $10,000
In our first grant round for education, we awarded Ready for School $40,000 to expand their Start School Ready pre-kindergarten preparation programming in partnership with area schools. Their initial grant award was based on the program serving up to 80 students. Ready for School has exceeded that with over 100 students signed up to participate in the program. Ready for School has been flexible to meet the preferred program delivery methods of different districts. This additional funding will cover the increased costs of materials and staffing needed to serve 25% more students than projected at the outset.
After a detailed application review process, area students were awarded scholarships in varying amounts from 94 different scholarship funds, for a total investment of over $600,000.
Students and their families came to the Yacht Basin Marina to meet the generous donors who made it possible for the students to receive these scholarships.
Mike Goorhouse, Community Foundation President and CEO, congratulated the scholars who he hopes will become future leaders in our community. “We’re honored to partner with your scholarship donors to support your educational journey,” he said.
Stacy Timmerman, Director of Scholarships, thanked the donors for their “continued support of the inspiring and deserving students.” She also addressed the students about the scholarship process. Stacy has spent many hours over the last few months reading through applications and meeting with review committees to determine recipients. “Students, please know that in our extremely competitive scholarship process, you were selected as the right person for your scholarship. We couldn’t be happier for you!” Stacy told them.
Jim Bishop from West Michigan Community Bank, who sponsored the event, shared his story on the many reasons he supports the Community Foundation. He spoke about how he received community foundation scholarships as a student and how that generosity changed his life for the better. It later inspired him to contribute financially and to get involved in board service at the community foundation as an adult. He encouraged each of the students to pay it forward to the next generation with time, talent, and/or treasure whenever they’re able.
The event also featured a student panel where four college students spoke about life in college and how different it can be from high school, some difficulties that come with college, and advice for incoming college freshman.
Stephanie Arndt from Hope College talked about how difficult it was for her to change her major and that she had to overcome her fear of claiming an English major, but it was” the most rewarding thing” she has ever done.
On advice for the scholarship recipients, student Kiannah Vandenberg from Grand Valley State University reminded the student scholars not to be upset or quit if they get a B or C on an assignment or in a course for the first time, as college classes can be very challenging and difficult even for the best students. She also talks about the opportunities of college internships which can give students college credit and experience doing something that they love.
After the panel, the reception lasted another hour with students and donors talking over cupcakes and lemonade and getting pictures taken together.
The Community Foundation is so happy to host this event that allows the students to meet and talk with their scholarship donors. We are so thankful to all of the donors for making such a big impact in the lives of these students. We congratulate these exemplary 2017 scholarship recipients and wish them every success in higher education and beyond.
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