OICF Annual Grants Award over $100,000 to Island Non-Profits

Youth Grant Awarded to Island Medical Collaboration

The Orcas Island Community Foundation (OICF) Grant Awards Ceremony again distributed over $100,000 in grant funds to 24 island non-profit ; the awards included a new OICF Focus Area Investment Grant of $14,000 to increase access to physical, mental and dental health care, which provides for the Medical Team International Dental Van visits to Orcas Island.

The ceremony at the Orcas Center on Thursday, May 24,  distributed the checks, made possible in part from the interest and dividend earnings income on the OICF Community Endowment Fund, which has grown to $1 million. Additional funds are contributed by individuals through the Partners in Philanthropy program.

The OICF Grants Committee, consisting of community volunteers Michael Brennan, Betty Corbett, Marlace Hughes, Midge Kraetzer, Audra Query Lawler, Ann Lister, Abby Rueb, Chris Sutton Jen Vollmer and Bea von Tobel and OICF board members Coleen O’Brien (Grant Committee Chair) and DimitriStankevich,  have reviewed each grant application to ensures that applicant organizations have the capacity to successfully and efficiently manage the programs for which they are requesting funding.

The review includes a site visit and interview with the project coordinator, review of financial status, board support, and IRS compliance. Once applications are fully vetted, the committee reconvenes and prioritizes the requests. The prioritized list is then made available to the community through the Partners in Philanthropy program, through which Partners review the vetted grants list and identify projects that they wish to support or contribute funds to the pool for the Grants Committee to allocate. Partners can partially or fully fund a project.

This year’s Partners in Philanthropy are identified as:

• Anonymous (5)
• Rachel Adams
• Marilyn Anderson
• Helen Bee
• Sally & Bruce Buchanan
• Joe Cohen
• Martha Farish & Clayton Philbrick
• Jim Connell & Chris Chandler
• Bettty Corbett
• Carl de Boor
• Diane Berreth & David Kobrin
• Lance Evans & Janet Brownell
• Henigson Family
• Sarah Jane Johnson
• Steve Jung & Susan McBain
• Midge Kraetzer
• Lutheran Church of the San Juan Islands
• Masterman Family
• Orcas LGBT Fund
• Joyce & Doug Pearson
• Glenn Prestwich & Barbara Bentley
• Mimi & Slim Sommerville
• Heung & Frank Stratton
• Howard Wright  & Kate Janeway
• Judith and Ed Zimmerman

A highlight of the ceremony, which is kept secret until the last moment, is the Youth Award announcement.

The senior economics class, taught by Val Hellar, is given $5,000 to distribute as they see fit to island non-profit organizations. Over the years, they have sometimes divided the funds among several organizations, as they did last year, when they divvied up the award among Orcas Island Food Bank, Island Reproductive Health Initiative, and Heart & Hands.

This year, Mackie Blackburn and Christopher Ghazel announced that the class had designated the Island Medical Collaboration as the sole recipient of the funds, to cover medical care for uninsured and underinsured clients at Orcas Medical Foundation, Orcas Family Health Center and Orcas Island Family Medicine.  The school grant supplements $1,500 given by two anonymous donors to the Island Medical Collaboration.

Art Lange accepted the award on behalf of the collaboration and later commented that the award spoke volumes of the high school students’ unselfishness and far-sightedness in understanding “the importance of health to the community.”

Rick Gould, a former OICF Trustee and retired family practice physician, seconded Lange’s comments and also recounted the beginnings of the OICF Youth Grants. When Gould’s own father retired, his son wanted him to spend his time and fortune in more than playing golf, so he encouraged him to start his own philanthropic foundation — which he did, though Gould says, “He still spent all his spare time playing golf.”

Rick served on the family foundation, and encouraged his three children, as teenagers, to work with the foundation to consider worthy recipients of funds. Years later, as the OICF grants process unfolded, Gould suggested that a similar program be started with Orcas Island Youth making the fund designation. His idea was accepted by the OICF, and based on its success, has been adopted by the Seattle Foundation, which has served for many years as OICF’s “umbrella” organization.