It is the season when Telluride Foundation staff and board members are busily reading Community Grant requests and having conversations with nonprofit applicants.  The Community Grant deadline was October 26, and the Foundation received 82 grants totaling $1,322,754 in requests, including four capital requests.

This year, the Grants Committee will award approximately $1 million. The Committee is chaired by Davis Fansler and includes the following board members: Anne Andrews, Richard Betts, Joanne Brown, George Glasier, Kevin Holbrook, Megan McManemin, Mike Plank.  New this year, Carol Friedrich, Director of the Ouray and San Miguel County Social Services, will attend the meeting during the deliberation of Human Service grants to add context and information regarding the landscape of human service needs and issues in the region.

The Community Grants program now has grant outcome measures for every nonprofit sector. These measures are the culmination of a three year process of working with nonprofits to identify practical, but informative, indicators which demonstrate that designated outcomes have been met. All applicants will report on projected grant outcomes and indicators, which will be used as a basis for reporting and evaluating program performance during the next year.

Also this year, the Foundation instituted a new policy of rotating to take one in five years off from applying for a grant.  About 12 nonprofits volunteered to take this year off, providing additional funding that the Grants Committee can allocate to new programs and projects as well as to capital applications. By instituting a flexible year off policy, the Foundation is reinforcing nonprofit sustainability and financial health by encouraging financial reserves, diverse revenue streams, and earned income opportunities, in addition to reducing dependency on a single funder, such as the Telluride Foundation.