Groups share almost $152,670 in Floyd County Community Foundation grant awards

By Bob Steenson, bsteenson@charlescitypress.com

Thirty-one Floyd County organizations received a share of $152,668.51 in grants Wednesday evening from the Floyd County Community Foundation at that group’s annual awards ceremony, held at the county fairgrounds.

The awarded funds support a diverse range of programs aimed at addressing community needs and enriching the lives of residents across Floyd County. The grants are awarded in six categories: Human Services, Community Betterment, Education and Youth Development, Environment and Animal Welfare, Health and Arts and Culture.

Within these areas, the funding will enable organizations to deliver services, repair or update facilities, increase recreational opportunities, upgrade equipment and technology, and improve accessibility.

Lisa Garden, chair of the foundation’s governing committee, said, “We’re confident these projects will have long-term positive results on communities in Floyd County and expand the ability for the organizations and departments to provide services to our residents.”

For example, Barbara Prather, executive director of the Northeast Iowa Food Bank, said its $10,000 grant would help continue the mobile food pantry, the school backpack program and keep helping support local food banks.

“We really appreciate the support because it will help over 1,700 people and nearly 600 children right here in Floyd County who are food insecure,” Prather said.

Lance Lasher, director of the YMCA, said its $5,000 grant would be used to help replace some of the sidewalk around the Y that has been in place since 1971.

Charlie Newman, a Floyd City Council member, said Floyd’s $10,000 would be used to renovate two pickleball courts in that city, “and kind of relieve Charles City of the overflow that they have on their pickleball courts.”

Floyd County Emergency Management Coordinator Jason Webster said the EMA grant for $9,347.89 would be used to update the county’s drone program, to aid in missing person searches, wildland firefighting and other hazardous situations.

Josh Chambers, captain of the Marble Rock Fire Department, said the department’s $7,500 grant would go to replace hoses that are more than 40 years old.

Paul Elmore, the EMS and Fire Service programs manager for North Iowa Area Community College, said the NIACC Charles City Career Center’s $3,154 grant would buy a simulator to let students hear different kinds of breath sounds during their training.

A $5,000 grant for TLC child care will support a program to teach kids healthy habits, said TLC Board President Danielle Ellingson.

Julie Taylor, manager of PAWS Humane Society, said their $3,922 grant would support low-cost cat spay and neuter clinics to reduce stray cats in the community, and low-cost microchipping clinics to identify animals that are lost.

Judy Hauser, representing the Senior Citizens of Charles City group, said their $4,500 would help continue to support programming and communications. Hauser said the congregate meals program at the Community Center “is at a crossroads,” because it needs more people to take advantage of the daily noon lunches. “We’ve just got to get more people coming and enjoying” the noon meals, as well as the programs that frequently precede the meals, at 11 a.m., she said.

Here are the organizations that received awards from the Floyd County Community Foundation Wednesday evening, and the purpose of the awards:

Human Service

• Crisis Intervention Service – technology update and access – $1,909

• Lutheran Services in Iowa – Floyd County Healthy Families Iowa – $2,000

• Northeast Iowa Food Bank – Feeding Communities, Floyd County – $10,000

• St John Evangelical Lutheran Church – Coats for Kids – $2,500

• Sunset Generation of Rockford – Rockford Congregate Meals – $2,000

• Trinity United Methodist Church – Our Brothers Keeper – $5,110.58

Community Betterment

• Charles City Family YMCA – sidewalk replacement – $5,000

• City of Charles City Library – Zastrow meeting room update – $9,750

• City of Floyd – pickleball court renovation – $10,000

• Floyd County Emergency Management Agency – drone – $9,347.89

• Grow Rockford Together Association – Wyatt Park Trail Phase I – $10,000

• Iowa Underwater Search and Rescue Inc. – equipment upgrade – $2,000

• Main Street Charles City – street banner replacement – $1,000

• Main Street Charles City – Charley Western Trail Committee trail signs – $7,000

• Marble Rock Fire Department – hose replacement – $7,500

• Nora Springs Impact Group – Panther Village ball diamonds – $5,970.57

• Rudd Community Fire Service – air packs and tanks – $10,000

Education and Youth Development

• Boy Scouts of America, Winnebago Council – “Eliminating Barriers To Success In School” – $1,450

• Floyd County ISU Extension and Outreach – 4-H archery program – $1,400

• North Central Iowa Ag in the Classroom – connecting Floyd County youth with agriculture – $2,000

• North Iowa Area Community College Foundation – Charles City Career Center nursing equipment – $3,157

• Rudd-Rockford-Marble Rock School District – RRMR Daycare – $5,000

• Rudd-Rockford-Marble Rock School District – RRMR PTO 2024 – $1,000

• TLC: The Learning Center – “Healthy Habits Start Now” – $5,000

Environment and Animal Welfare

• PAWS Humane Society – microchip and cat neuter/spay clinics – $3,922

• N-Compass Inc. – Iowa Project AWARE 2025 – $5,000

Health

• Senior Citizens of Charles City Area – programming and communication – $4,500

Arts and Culture

• Daughters of Union Veterans of the Civil War – restoration of Civil War Memorial – $5,000

• Floyd County Fair Society – Prehistoric Dinosaur Exhibit at county fair – $10,000

• Floyd County Historical Society and Museum – technology updates – $2,351.47

• National 19th Amendment Society – “Setting the Table” – $1,800

Decisions on grant awards are determined by a local committee which consists of volunteers from Floyd County. Committee members are Lisa Garden (chair), Jennifer Burton, Hannah Chambers, Cheryl Erb, Beverly Fisher, Melissa Jones, Amy Leaman and Sarah Murray.

FCCF funds established by donors contributing to the discretionary grant process are the Starr Home Endowment Fund and the Bucklen Family Community Endowment Fund, according to information from the Community Foundation of Northeast Iowa, under which the Floyd County Community Foundation and 19 other Iowa counties are organized.

Grant applicants must be a 501(c)(3) designated organization or government entities serving Floyd County in order to be considered for funding. The 2025 grant cycle opens Sept. 1 with an application deadline of Oct. 15. The grant guidelines and application can be found at www.floydccf.org.

Foundation charitable director: Consider leaving funds to local charities

By Bob Steenson, bsteenson@charlescitypress.com

Billions of dollars could be leaving Iowa in the future because people who die here did not remember local groups or organizations in their wills, said Terry Gaumer, affiliate charitable impact director for the Community Foundation of Northeast Iowa.

Gaumer talked briefly about the importance of people remembering local groups while doing their estate planning, as part of an introduction at the Floyd County Community Foundation Awards held Wednesday evening at the Floyd County Fairgrounds.

“The Community Foundation was established in 1956, and the affiliates started 20 years ago in 2005,” she said. “We do have about $165 million in assets in our funds, and those funds are held to support the activities of our non-profit partners, which are mostly our endowment funds. Of course, Floyd County is under that umbrella.”

Gaumer said there is “an astounding transfer of wealth, … of generational dollars that are going from one generation to the next. And a lot of that money is leaving Iowa. And it’s literally billions of dollars.”

The Iowa Council of Foundations that works with all the community foundations across the state has started a “Five for the Future” campaign, asking people to set aside 5% of their estates for local charities.

The 5% is a small amount after funds have been allocated to take care of family members or for other uses, she said, but if everyone did that it would make a huge difference for local nonprofit groups.

“The amount of dollars that would be coming into nonprofits and even through the Community Foundation and endowment funds is pretty overwhelming. And it would really close these gaps that we have when we have more applications than we have dollars,” she said.

The Five for the Future program has been successful in places like Kansas and Nebraska, and people should start hearing more about it in Iowa, Gaumer said.

When people are asked if they included local charities in their estate planning, the answer is often no, and the most common reasons are because the non-profits didn’t ask them for a bequest, or their financial advisors didn’t bring it up, or the people themselves didn’t think of it while doing their estate planning, she said.

“So if you’re in a non-profit and you’re looking for dollars, you really need to be talking to people about that last gift and if you can be part of their 5%,” she said.

“The initiative really is for everyone, regardless of the size of their estate. The 5% is a small amount after everything to take care of their families or other things like that. It’s trying to remember your local community,” Gaumer said.

“For most people that are looking at doing some planning, they really do want to give back to their communities. Not everybody understands how they can do it. And we have a lot of different ways to do that.”