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Chilkat Valley Community Foundation grants $67k to local nonprofits – KHNS Radio


The Chilkat Valley Community Foundation (CVCF) awarded grants to 22 Haines nonprofits at the Chilkat Center on Oct. 10. This has been an annual event for 15 years, says Liz Heywood, chair of CVCF. 

This was the 15th year that the Chilkat Valley Community Foundation has awarded grants,” Heywood said. “We started out in 2009 giving out $10,500 in grants. I am really happy to say that over those 15 years, we have now given out over $635,000 in grants and 38,500 in scholarships.

These grants go to help fund various nonprofits that benefit the community.

 “I just think it’s really exciting to hear all the different things that are being done in the valley, and all the different ways that people are going to be helped through the grants that happen,” Heywood said. “So, the grants ranged from $1,000 to $5,000 and we gave out 22 of them. So it’s exciting. The Bald Eagle Foundation is doing some Tlingit signage for their establishment. Friends of the Library wants to create some little free libraries to put in more remote areas of the Chilkat Valley so people have access to books. H.A.R.K. is getting money to help their span neuter clinic they do two a year.

Haines Friends of Recycling Chair Melissa Aronson says these grants are very helpful for funding their annual budget, which then goes to pay for various parts of the organization.

This year, we just asked for general operating support,” Aronson said. “So it helps, helps with all of the programs that we run in the course of the year. And helps pay for our staff person at the recycling center and, you know, rent and utilities and those kinds of kinds of things. We have over the years applied both for general operating support and also for some specific projects. And we’ve been successful every year, and the specific projects have had a real impact in the community. Our annual budget runs around $60,000 so the grant from the Chilkat Valley Community Foundation helped supplement our budget.

The money also funds local restoration projects. Eldred Rock Lighthouse Preservation Society Executive Director Sue York says this grant helps her organization every year in work compensation.   

We’ve gotten a grant three times,” York said. “This is our third one from CVCF. So on the lighthouse, there’s a wooden railing that’s supposed to go around it. And that wooden railing was destroyed in 2016 by a storm, and so we are going to replace it. The grant is supporting funding that, and mainly to pay the carpenter who’s going to reproduce this railing. And because it’s a custom build, it’s, you know, nothing in the lighthouse is standard. It’s all built in 1905 so we’re replacing it exactly the way it was before, but a little bit higher.

Heywood says she’s happy to be a part of a foundation that can help give back to the community.

If you’re an organization, or you’re a person who has a really good idea for how some community need can be met, that you can reach out to the community foundation and talk to us about it and see if there’s if there’s a way to make that work, to apply for a grant in the fall,” Heywood said. “I think that our community having a little committee like this that has this kind of local support that was generated by donors for the nonprofits is really an incredible thing.

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