Passion & Purpose: Winter 2024/2025
The Springfield giving circle celebrated its inaugural grantmaking in November
Four nonprofits benefited from the kindness of 64 people in November, when the Generosity Collective — the CFO’s new giving circle dedicated to the Springfield community — distributed $144,580 to rounds of applause and stories sharing the difference those dollars will make.
“The idea behind the Generosity Collective is to bring together a next generation of philanthropists to collectively make a significant impact,” said Winter Kinne, CFO president and CEO. “When everybody’s gifts are added up, it results in larger grants than those individuals could make alone.”
With membership dues of $2,500 in its first year, the giving circle allocated funds to four nonprofits that focused on “red flags” identified in the Community Focus Report for Springfield & Greene County: child abuse and neglect; a shortage of safe, affordable housing; economic disparities impacting early childhood development; and mental health and substance-use problems. Those priorities led the Collective to choose four organizations to receive $36,145 each.
“This money is helping people right here in this community function and heal and do better in their everyday lives and do basic things that a lot of us take for granted, like going to our job,” said Anne Crites, assistant director of The Victim Center. The center received funding to provide free counseling to victims of sexual and violent crimes.
The four grants also support needs from child development to the care of neighborhoods and community building, the latter in both literal and figurative ways.
“This project is more than providing houses. It is also providing employment, skill development with a 70-year-old guy teaching our 20-year-old men to frame right now,” noted Amy Blansit, CEO of the Drew Lewis Foundation. Its Blue House Project provides affordable, quality home-ownership options for low- to moderate-income individuals. Funding from the giving circle will support a complete home renovation in the Grant Beach neighborhood. “This is going to affect multiple families, multiple homes, and continue to allow us to do affordable housing in Springfield,” Blansit said.
Down the street, the OTC Foundation received funding to support the full-time site coordinator/family advocate at Study Nursery, which offers care for babies and toddlers of high school students.
“Every day, when I go to work, I get to watch a brain being built that is going to serve our community for generations to come,” said Faith Swickard, Study Nursery site coordinator. “Because of the daily love, care, support and safety that they’re provided, they will have an impact on all the things they do for years and years after.”
Ultimately, all of those dollars focus on a common mission: Making the world better today, and tomorrow.
“It also inspires organizations like CASA to sit down and say, ‘What are we doing well, but what do we need to do better?’” said Laura Farmer, executive director of CASA of Southwest Missouri, which received funding to add an early childhood specialist. “I can’t wait to put these funds to good use, and hopefully in a year, we can report back to you all the great things that we’ve done.”
By Kaitlyn McConnell · This essay is featured in the winter 2024/2025 edition of Passion & Purpose.
