2009 Promising Projects

Despite the dedicated effort of experienced staff and volunteers, Catherine’s Care Center (Catherine’s), a local provider of healthcare to lower income, uninsured individuals and families, turns away more than 200 patients each month for lack of capacity. Because Catherine’s is the only affordable option for many of these patients, they often forego care until there is room or until their condition deteriorates enough to land them in an area hospital emergency department. This dilemma further burdens an already fractured community health care system and can heighten a family’s health and economic risks.

Catherine’s received Frey Foundation funding to help renovate 6,500 square-feet of donated space in a former parochial elementary school for use as an expanded clinic. The planned improvements will transform vacant classrooms into exam rooms, lab, reception area, office space and storage, greatly expanding Catherine’s capacity to provide healthcare to the medically underserved.

The Alano Club of Charlevoix has operated in northern Michigan for nearly 25 years, providing an alcohol and drug-free environment for 12-step recovery programs. In each of the past four years the club has experienced steady increases in group meeting attendance. As a result, their meeting space is beyond capacity much of the time and some meetings are too large to allow everyone to participate during the session – a key element in recovery.

With the help of philanthropic support including a grant from the Frey Foundation, the Alano Club of Charlevoix added an additional 840 square feet to their current 722 square foot, one-story facility complete with a full basement beneath the new addition for utilities and storage. The addition doubled their convening space, and increased handicap accessibility. The construction of the new space was completed in partnership with the Charlevoix Public Schools Building Trades Program.

Named for its historic location, Cross Village Rug Works plans to help reinvigorate the area economy with the launch a not-for-profit retail outlet featuring the work of local, low-income artisans. Operating from 3,200 square feet of donated space twenty miles north of Harbor Springs, Cross Village Rug Works will provide the training needed by unemployed and underemployed area residents to create high-quality, hand crafted floor coverings. The products will be displayed and sold through a tourist-heavy retail location with proceeds directed towards the long-term sustainability of the agency.

The Grand Action Foundation (Grand Action) received support to develop a master plan for pedestrian access to Crescent Park and the Medical Mile. The scope of the project includes the route extending west from Crescent Park and through the Calder Plaza and DeVos Place to the Grand River, and the route along Bostwick Street extending south from Crescent Park to Lyon including exterior spaces up to the edges of existing Grand Rapids Community College buildings. Led by a local landscape architectural firm, the master plan will consist of a comprehensive architectural design process.

At the conclusion of the study, Grand Action expects to have recommendations for improved walkability, beauty enhancing landscape, traffic calming, street treatments, and strategies for phased implementation.

Literacy education has a specific role in interrupting the generational link between poverty and illiteracy in equipping parents with the skills and confidence needed to read to their children and cultivate a learning environment in their homes. The Literacy Center of West Michigan (Literacy Center) plans to facilitate that process with a dramatic expansion of their Family Literacy pilot project aimed at strengthening the cognitive skills, vocabulary and reading comprehension of low-income parents and their children. The initiative is a part of an ambitious five-year advancement campaign that seeks greater sustainability for the Literacy Center’s key strategic priorities: reaching a greater number of individuals with their traditional tutoring programs, and delivering services to a greater number of children and their parents.

If successful, this project will allow more parents to receive the training necessary to become proficient life-long readers, making it more likely that their children will enter school with the early literacy skills needed for success in school and in life.

Based on successful programs operating in other parts of the country, MomsBloom received funding to help fill a gap in the service continuum currently offered to new parents in west Michigan. With society becoming increasingly mobile, traditional networks of friends and family are more likely than in past generations to be geographically disbursed. This often leaves new parents feeling isolated, exhausted and overwhelmed at critical early stages of their child’s life. Left unmanaged, these stressors can lead to a host of issues that have proved detrimental to a child’s healthy development including increased risk of abuse and neglect, poor bonding, untreated postpartum depression and prolonged marital discord.

Its name notwithstanding, MomsBloom offers services to mothers and fathers related to parenting, lactation, community resources, and mentoring in their homes each week for the first few months of an infant’s life. By offering an array of physical and emotional supports, MomsBloom helps parents cope during a time of major transition while promoting the healthy growth and development of the newborn.

In the spring of 2009, the Grand Rapids Community, Steelcase and Frey Foundations convened the area’s major arts institutions to begin a conversation on the impacts the recession was having on their organizations and to discover what possibilities might emerge as short- and long-term strategies to foster continued vitality and growth of the sector. The main concept that emerged in that and subsequent meetings was of a collective marketing effort focused on building audience by emphasizing the diverse array of accessible art and cultural offerings in the community. In the spring of 2010, a new web portal (www.whatsyourartgr.com) will be unveiled as part of a short-term marketing campaign that will provide a dynamic web-based repository of arts and cultural events in the Grand Rapids community and incorporates social media tools. The Arts Council of Greater Grand Rapids is taking the lead in coordinating the sector’s involvement to ensure it remains a robust and vibrant resource. Evaluation metrics have been built into the site in order to measure impacts of the campaign.

Support for this effort is hoped to not only build the organizational capacity of the Arts Council but also strengthen its role within the arts community. The success of this campaign will evidence growth in arts audiences and expose more residents to the rich array of arts and cultural offerings in the region.

Situated on Lake Michigan at the mouth of the Kalamazoo River, the Saugatuck Harbor Natural Area is a landscape totaling 161 acres of interdunal wetlands interspersed with open dunes with rare plant and animal species. It adjoins the Village of Saugatuck’s Oval Beach to the south and a bit further to the north is the Saugatuck Dune State Park.

A partnership of conservation organizations has been working for years to permanently protect this land for public use. A regional acquisition priority, it is one of the most significant natural areas left along the Lake Michigan shoreline and when protected, would will further a stretch of surrounding protected private and public land totaling 1,700 acres and stretching for almost four miles along Lake Michigan.

The Frey Foundation, with several other private funders in the region, has offered financial support to ensure this regionally significant lakeshore property will forever remain undisturbed and be made available to the people of west Michigan, the state and the broader region as a protected natural area.

The Char-Em United Way embarked on a strategic reorganization process three years ago and continues to retool and strengthen their organization to better meet the needs of vulnerable populations in northern Michigan. In the context of a strained local, state, and national economy, their efforts to attract funding for human service agencies that provide food, shelter and utility assistance are increasing vital. The agency has successfully leveraged Frey Foundation funding to increase leadership giving while cultivating more modest donors to foster steady growth in annual campaign during the reorganization. Next, Char-Em United Way plans to explore best practice to launch a Loaned Executive program and improve donor communications.