A report is now out on a program that uses gambling proceeds to try and spur more cities and counties to create foundations. Angie Dethlefs-Trettin, is the director of the Iowa Council of Foundations, which is overseeing the program.
She says there are 14 counties with gambling licenses that provide grants to their areas. Dethlefs-Trettin says the endowment program takes some of the gambling funds and gives it to the 85 counties without casinos to reinvest in their communities. Dethlefs-Trettin says the idea was to give an incentive for the counties to create foundations.
Dethlefs-Trettin says the intent is to get them to create a long-term, grant-making organization that can help build endowments for their communities well into the future. There wasn’t a lack of interest in the money.The program had 2,601 grant applications seeking funding of approximately 16-million dollars. They awarded 1,509 grants totaling more than three-point-nine million dollars.
Dethlefs-Trettin says they’re pleased with the way local volunteers really made a great effort to develop proposals for the grants. About 60-percent of the grants awarded were classified as being capital related grants, building or physically improving something. The other 40 percent were for programs started in communities. You can learn more about the community foundation program and see the report on the grants on-line at the foundation’s website .