Collaboration is at the HEART of what we do!
Bright flowers, fresh air, and warmer days are all signs that Spring is here! Before you know it, we
will be into summer, venturing back outside and entertaining guests from far and wide. Before we
do that, please consider renewing your Foundation membership or becoming a Foundation
member and strengthen the Voice of Community! Your membership DOLLARS help with needed
unrestricted funding, and the NUMBER of memberships helps us to illustrate the amount of
members in support of community priorities. Our goal is to engage 250 members and we are
currently about halfway there, please help us succeed!
All nonprofits in Carbon County are lucky to have supporters who contribute time and funds,
making our community such a great place to live and visit. Our nonprofits come together to share
that support during the annual Fun Run for Charities. The Fun Run gives us a wonderful
opportunity to fundraise collaboratively. Each charity keeps what they raise and receive additional
matching funds based on what they raised for the Fun Run, an important incentive to work
together.
Our collaboration in programs makes sure we don’t duplicate services, making your support go even
further. We’ve learned how to create collaborative grant requests that benefit each organization,
based on their role in projects and programs. Most recently, nonprofits that are either currently or
planning on running capital campaigns met to discuss how best to communicate their needs across
the community, without competing with one another. We understand that you support what’s
closest to your personal interests and what you recognize as the highest need. We are creating a
collaborative communication to share with you, so you can be aware of each capital campaign in
our community. We hope this increased level of communication among nonprofits will remove
pressure that may inadvertently be placed on you. It is our greatest hope that you will feel informed
and supported in these very personal decisions!
The renovation of the Old Roosevelt school building exemplifies another area of collaboration.
The community is working together to grow the arts, culture, and conference economic pie for
everyone. Most recently, we engaged with a group of individuals who have committed to two
rooms to create STEAM maker spaces to develop students’ competencies and interests in science,
technology, engineering, art, and math. These rooms will provide spaces for youth and adults to
work side by side as creators, using their minds and hands! We have not actively raised money for
Old Roosevelt since we purchased it in June of 2017, but now we need to. Our role at Old Roosevelt
is not to create our own programming, but to renovate and rent a shared space for our community,
as it was an identified need in our community to do so. We are working alongside community
partners to build greater capacity for existing and new arts activities, culture, and conference
endeavors. Every decision we make at Old Roosevelt is based on bringing more people to Red Lodge
and encouraging those visitors to explore the businesses and organizations of our community
helping to support and expand Red Lodge as an art, culture, and conference destination!
Working together with our community, we have been making all of the programs in this letter a
possibility and we could not do that without you!