SJI Community Foundation to Launch Virtual Fair Matching Grant Program August 12th

Community Foundation at the Fair 2017 - Contributed Photo

Excerpt­ed from the SJI Com­mu­ni­ty Foun­da­tion web­site…

Each year, the San Juan Island Com­mu­ni­ty Foun­da­tion hosts an excit­ing match­ing grant pro­gram in their booth at the San Juan Coun­ty Fair. This tra­di­tion gives local non­prof­its height­ened vis­i­bil­i­ty in the com­mu­ni­ty and a chance to raise funds for cur­rent projects. More than $65k was award­ed to 9 non­prof­its fol­low­ing the 2019 coun­ty fair!

When it became nec­es­sary to move to a vir­tu­al coun­ty fair in 2020, the SJICF staff was deter­mined to find cre­ative ways to keep the match­ing grant pro­gram alive. A vir­tu­al fair match­ing grant pro­gram was designed and will be launched dur­ing the 4 days of the fair, August 12–15.  The online grant cat­a­log will fea­ture 30 local non­prof­its in a wide vari­ety of inter­est areas, includ­ing edu­ca­tion, visu­al and per­form­ing arts, ani­mal wel­fare and health and human services.

Accord­ing to Car­rie Unping­co, Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of SJICF, “We look for­ward to the fair every year because it’s a chance for us to vis­it with donors in a fun set­ting and to engage the entire com­mu­ni­ty in local phil­an­thropy. There is so much oppor­tu­ni­ty to sup­port local non­prof­its as they con­tin­ue to pro­vide ser­vices dur­ing COVID-19 despite hav­ing to can­cel annu­al fundrais­ing galas and events. This year, funds are being request­ed for both pro­gram sup­port and oper­a­tions. Although gen­er­al oper­at­ing expens­es are not typ­i­cal­ly with­in our grant guide­lines, we feel strong­ly that now is the time to pro­vide fund­ing sup­port to pro­grams as well as to sus­tain non­prof­it oper­a­tions.”

The vir­tu­al grant cat­a­log will open on SJICF’s web­site at sjicf.org dur­ing the 4 days of the fair, August 12–15. SJICF will match up to the first $1,000 raised for each project. 

Mark your cal­en­dars to vis­it sjicf.org August 12–15 so you can sup­port your favorite nonprofits!

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