Sean C Morgan
The Sweet Home City Council has instructed City Manager Ray Towry to work with the Sweet Home Community Foundation on transferring the city’s Community Grants Program to the foundation.
Council members discussed the issue during their May 22 meeting.
While the city would continue to fund the program, through an agreement between the city and the nonprofit, the Sweet Home Community Foundation would manage the grant program.
The city has offered the community grants off and on for several years, Towry told the council. In the 2017-18 fiscal year, the city funded $5,000 in two grant cycles.
During the last cycle, Towry said, the city didn’t even receive $2,500, half of the budget, in grant applications.
Towry said that some grant recipients have received funds from both sources and the two programs are often confused.
The city’s winter grant cycle, one of two it offers, occurs during the Community Foundation’s annual grant cycle.
Most of the recipients, in both cases, are small volunteer organizations, Towry said. The city’s program puts them through a grant cycle two or three times a year for a relatively small amount of funding.
“The city’s not built for this,” Towry said. “The Sweet Home Community Foundation is. They have systems in place.”
Towry said he has had conversations with foundation President Bob Burford and board member Tim McQueary, and they discussed putting the city’s funds into a lump sum for distribution through the foundation’s grant process.
They also discussed having a city councilor involved in the selection process for city-funded grants.
Towry said it could be a “win-win-win” for the city, the foundation and grant applicants.
He sought the council’s consensus before moving forward with the conversation and an agreement.
McQueary and Burford were unable to attend the council meeting, but councilors asked McQueary’s wife, Jo Ann McQueary, what she thought about it. She is involved with a variety of charitable foundations throughout the region.
McQueary said she is not involved in the discussion or the foundation, but she thought it was a prudent, responsible and wise move.
The foundation was created in 1997 to provide a way for the Sweet Home Economic Development Group to fund local projects through proceeds raised by the Oregon Jamboree, the annual three-day camping and country music festival held in Sweet Home, she said. People would no longer need to go to the SHEDG board with requests.
Originally called the “council grant program,” the city’s grant program was created several years ago as an alternative to asking the Budget Committee for funding, said Budget Committee Chairman Dave Holley. The committee would receive requests in the range of $3,000 to $5,000 for various projects during the spring budget process.
Nonprofits would come to the city looking for support, often with permit fees, Mayor Greg Mahler said.
Councilor Dave Trask said the council has caught grief for funding programs outside the city limits.
McQueary said she believed grants could be limited geographically if the council preferred that.
“It makes sense to me,” Mahler said, and the council gave its consensus to Towry to move forward with the idea.
Present at the meeting were Bob Briana, Susan Coleman, Lisa Gourley, Mahler, Trask, James Goble and Diane Gerson.