The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
A more modest grant cycle than usual
Responding to concerns and requests from some local non-profit organizations, the Gunnison County Metropolitan Recreation District has reversed course and will hold a grant cycle this year.
Originally, the Met Rec district board of directors had decided not to award grants in the budget this year due to financial constraints. But several non-profits asked them to reconsider, given the tight budget situations of all the non-profits. At the Monday, February 16 meeting, the Met Rec board agreed to consider awarding grant monies to local organizations.
“We decided that we’ll have a grant cycle in 2009,” explained board member Paul Wayne Foreman. “We will solicit and accept applications that are postmarked by April 1. We will review and discuss the applications at our April 20 meeting and award the grants at our May meeting.”
Foreman said the board has not set an amount from their budget that will be used for grants. “This will be a more modest grant cycle than we have had recently,” he admitted. “But we don’t want to have a specific amount. We don’t want to limit ourselves.”
District business manager Lori Patin said the board has never tied itself to a specific grant amount figure. “They have always considered each project on its own,” she explained. “Right now there is $20,000 set aside in the 2009 budget under the grant funding line item. The original intent of that money was to have in case a project needed some last-minute funding.”
The Met Rec district has awarded more than $823,000 in grants since 2001. It has also passed through another $250,000 in conjunction with Colorado Lottery funds.
“I am happy that they are going to award grants this year. I think the meeting on Monday went well,” said Wynn Williams of Crested Butte, a former Met Rec board member and former member of the Crested Butte Center for the Arts board. He is a longtime advocate of the district spending money on recreation activities other than television. “I just strongly believe in spending money on things other than over-the-air television signals.”
Foreman said the maximum award granted this year to any one organization would be $5,000. “We’ll look most favorably at requests that include matching funds from outside the organization,” he said. “We’ll also be looking for programs that provide services to the greatest number of users and programs that are provided at no cost, such as Alpenglow up in Crested Butte as an example.”
Patin said guidelines and grant applications will be available online at www.gcmetrec.com by the end of the week.
