Twenty-five percent less to grant this year due to pandemic
Grow Greene County Gaming Corporation, the local nonprofit corporation that holds the state gaming license in Greene County, distributed over $1 million worth of grants at its 5th annual Awards Night, last spring virtually. Two weeks later they were also providing $35,000 in pandemic relief across the county towards public health, education, food, utilities, and small retailer economic promotions.
Funds available to be awarded in 2021 will be down due to the pandemic and Wild Rose being closed for 10 weeks in 2020. Travis Dvorak, general manager at Wild Rose Jefferson, informed Grow Greene that those 10 weeks, historically, are the busiest time of year at the casino. Under agreement with Wild Rose Entertainment Inc., Grow Greene receives 5 percent of the local casino’s adjusted gross gaming revenues to distribute to nonprofit, governmental and charitable organizations. Of that total Grow Greene awards 4.1 percent to projects in Greene County and 0.9 percent is shared equally by the community foundations in the six counties contiguous to Greene County.
Norm Fandel, President of Grow Greene had these words for organizations that receive funding from Grow Green or are applying through our competitive grant application; “As COVID has hit the country and impacted our lives tremendously we are still encouraging groups/entities to keep project(s) alive and moving forward, improving our communities and giving everyone a sense of status quo. With our revenues down by 25 percent it will be a difficult time for our board to make tough financial decision in the upcoming months in the distribution of funds. Please understand our funds will be tight, changes will have to be made this year and our goals and mission is to improve our communities in the best area possible with the funds we will have to distribute.”
Grow Greene will release the application for the sixth round of competitive grants in Greene County on Oct. 1. The application is on the new Grow Greene County website, www.growgreenecounty.org that is due to be unveiled this fall. The application is also available by emailing growgreenecounty@gmail.com. Completed applications must be delivered by Feb. 10, 2021. Even though the amount of funds available to award may be down somewhat, Grow Greene still encourages organizations to apply.
The Grow Greene County board of directors includes president Norm Fandel, vice president Craig Marquardt, secretary Peg Raney, treasurer Bob Allen and board members Lori Mannel, Brenda Muir, Kate Neese and Rick Morain. Two ex-officio members joined the board in 2019: Dawn Rudolph, representing the Greene County board of supervisors and Matt Wetrich, representing the City of Jefferson. Board attorney is Mike Mumma. Grantees with questions may be interacting with Grow Greene’s administrative assistant Cindy Duhrkopf.
