About 60 people attended the ninth annual Greene County Community Foundation’s grant recognition in Jefferson last night.

27 organizations received funding for various projects throughout the county.  The list includes projects at almost every single library in the county, both the sheriff’s office and the Jefferson Police Department to various community projects.

Vice-President Tom Wind told Raccoon Valley Radio about the process of how the selection committee decides on what projects gets funded.  He said it’s a collaborative effort between the board members and after they use a 1-100 rating system, they will then decide which projects will be fully funded, which will be partially funded and which ones don’t receive any funding.

Wind announced that they gave away $121,644 and the committee approved 27 of 37 applications of which eight were fully funded and all the others were at least 50% funded.

Some of the larger grants went to large-scale projects like the Greene County Conservation Board that received $14,750 to help pave 11 gravel road crossings in the county on the Raccoon River Valley Trail.  Others were the Greene County Chamber and Development for $14,500 in support of the Welcome Center on the southeast corner of the downtown square in Jefferson.

President Tim Heisterkamp said that they also used 5% of their $600,000 endowment fund to help with more projects this year.

He talked about his favorite part of last year’s event.

“Well, it’s just a whole lot of fun giving money away and seeing the great projects going on in Greene County because there’s so much volunteerism going on (and) people are donating their time and their effort and sometimes they would like to do more but they just don’t have the funds.  So, the best part is to give funds for good projects all across Greene County.”

A full list of this year’s recipients can be found by clicking on the yellow picture below.