Hello Hello!

I've fallen off the bandwagon a little bit again over the last two weeks. I've known for months that August was going to be a busy month at the Community Foundation- particularly for me. "Busy" is an understatement-- I have been reading grant proposals and contacting Donor Advisors for their support since the day I returned from my July vacation. I finally made it through the proposals in time for our Grant Committee meeting on August 12th, where we made the decision to grant out $114,836 to Routt & Moffat County nonprofit organizations! This will be combined with the Community Cares Grants (grants to organizations that are able to aid individuals with emergency rent, food, medical etc expenses due to the economy) as well as Environmental Grants. So, this is the amazing part of my job-- where I am truly making a difference and doing exciting work! Of course, its hard to remember how exciting it is when I am working late and early and stressing over the details. So I am constantly trying to remember how incredible my job is!

Now that the grant decisions have been made, I have a lot of follow up work to do prior to our Board meeting on Wednesday, where they will approve all of our committee's decisions. After that I need to get agreement letters and checks to the organizations. Additionally, the other aspects of my job such as Scholarships & filling our empty Passport Club memberships have been entirely brushed aside in the past couple months and now I really need to get back on the bandwagon with those. So to sum things up, my job is exciting and busy busy busy. One more week then things should start quieting down a wee bit.

In other news, we have been hiking & camping the past two weekends. I will now post some visuals from both. Our trips have been in the Zirkel wilderness in Clark, which is where Vista Verde Ranch (where I worked and lived for my first year out here) is located. I haven't spent much time up north since I left VVR, so it has been really wonderful to reconnect with those incredible mountains and landscapes.