Jason Pahl & Terry Brokoff – In Their Own Words, Documented by Phil Eich
“The Gladwin County Community Foundation is an affiliate of the Midland Area Community Foundation. Back in 1995, Gary Allen got a call from a judge in Bay City and said, ‘The tobacco settlement money’s coming. You’ve got to have a fund to receive that money, Gladwin County doesn’t have one, and you need one.’ So a bunch of folks got together to create a fund, and in September of 2000, the Midland Area Community Foundation granted Gladwin $5,000 to start it.
Through donations and more people getting involved, that fund grew to $80,000, then to $200,000. Then in 2009, the Midland Area Community Foundation came to us with a plan to grow beyond being a fund and into our own Community Foundation. They gave us two different proposals in 2009, and we went with the proposal where they were going to grant us $350,000 with downscaling grants over the next five years. They were trying to get our fund balance to a million dollars because, at that point, we could become the Gladwin County Community Foundation.
Because of their support and through donations from generous people in the community, we reached that point, and in January of 2015, we became the Gladwin County Community Foundation.
90% of what we do as a Foundation is granting money to people that need it, and one of the ways we do that we started in 2018 called short-form grants. We set aside $20,000 for the 15 townships in Gladwin County, the City of Gladwin, and the City of Beaverton, and people can request a $2000 grant with a form that is only two pages and easy to fill out. The last one we approved was so somebody could buy a new generator for their building.
When we first became a Foundation, we had 13 funds and about $1.87 million in assets. Since then, we’ve grown to 38 funds and over $5.5 million. From the Midland Area Community Foundation granting us $5000 to over $5 million! You look around the community, and you can see that it does so much good: over the last five years, we’ve disbursed $50 million dollars to the community through grants, scholarships, and projects. We want to collaborate with whoever has needs, help nonprofits, do whatever we can to benefit the community, and make the quality of life better in Gladwin County.
It’s a fun job, giving good people the money they need to do great things. Over the next 20 years, we want to continue educating people about who we are and the work we do, adding funders and growing the Gladwin County Community Foundation.”
