S ome people in our community are forced to choose every day between paying for the prescription drugs they need and buying

groceries or paying rent.It’s a choice Veronica Almaguer, case manager at

Cristo Rey Community Center in Lansing, sees all too often.

Cristo Rey is the only organization in mid-Michigan with one staff member entirely devoted to helping uninsured, low-income residents receive access to free medication. Almaguer is an angel to hundreds of tri-county residents who otherwise would never be able to navigate the intricacies of all of the forms drug companies require to qualify for such assistance.

“If you’re not familiar with the system, you’re lost,” Almaguer said. “It can be overwhelming, especially for seniors, especially for those who speak only Spanish.”

Almaguer evaluates all clients personally and pairs them with the programs for which they will qualify.

As a result of the Capital Region Community Foundation’s $6,400 grant in 2009, along with money from other funding sources, Cristo Rey’s prescription assistance program was able to secure $772,702 worth of prescription medication for 1,365 people.

Not having to spend money on medication allowed those

Cristo Rey is on a mission for medicine

Almaguer

“Of all the programs here, this one leverages the most funds. ... Without our

service, those people are lost.”John Roy Castillo

executive director, Cristo Rey Community Center

@givelansing

T here’s something to be said for wishing others well. When ITEC Lansing executive director Kirk Riley and Impression 5 executive director Erik Larson each learned the other was a finalist for the Capital Region

Community Foundation’s Impact Grant, they said they hoped the other organization would win. Both organizations won. And it’s a win for our community. “As the emerging technology industry grows in our region, the Community Foundation believes it’s vital for our children to have the training to compete for jobs in these fields,” said Dennis W. Fliehman, president and CEO of the Capital Region Community Foundation. The Community Foundation, which had planned to award one $75,000 Impact Grant, saw the value of the alignment of ITEC and I5’s missions, and chose to support both proposals. ITEC (Information Technology Empowerment Center) plans to open ITEC Pathways, a learning center in the former Holmes Street School that will offer program instruction designed to help train tomorrow’s scientists and engineers. ITEC works with nonprofits, faith-based organizations and in Lansing schools to prepare mostly middle-school students to compete for jobs in the fast-paced, global, IT economy. Impression 5 will use the funds to create an Emerging Media and Technology Lab within the science center’s current location. The lab will greatly increase the center’s capacity for engaging residents of the tri-county region in the areas of science, technology, engineering and math. Visitors to the center will have the opportunity use media equipment and science technology to create their own learning experiences.

“The Emerging Media and Technology Lab allows for much broader access to technology during a visit to Impression 5,” Larson said. “For so long, we’ve been led by the nose to learn content someone else chooses. The access the lab provides will help visitors answer their questions.” Larson pointed to the way a 5- or a 7-year-old learns. “They’re fearless. They take risks,” he said. “In

Community Foundation doubles its impact with two $75K grants

2010 Report to the Community

/givelansing

GRANTS continued on page 2

MISSION continued on page 2

A longstanding commitment to neighbors, region

The Capital Region Community Foundation was established in 1987 as a permanent community endowment, built with gifts from hundreds of individuals and organizations committed to a strong future for mid-Michigan. We serve as a vehicle for donors, volunteers and community members to identify important charitable needs and build financial resources to make positive long-term change in our region.

Since its founding, the Community Foundation has distributed more than $26 million in grants to thousands of charitable programs in Ingham, Eaton and Clinton counties.

The Community Foundation is governed by a board of community leaders and awards grants to support a wide variety of activities and programs benefiting education, arts and culture, health, human services, community development and civic affairs in mid-Michigan.

Every day, the Community Foundation is helping individuals, businesses, nonprofit organizations and other foundations meet their charitable and financial goals by serving as a vehicle that makes giving to one’s community easier, flexible and effective.

Building community capital is at the heart of the Capital Region Community Foundation’s organizational mission. We work to encourage endowment-building as an effective means to address community challenges and opportunities. The Community Foundation builds flexible endowment funds that can meet changing needs in mid-Michigan. More than 75 nonprofit organizations currently have endowments with the Community Foundation.

We promote and facilitate community philanthropy and we also help donors invest in organizations they care about nationwide. We do this by:

• Making strategic investments in programs and organizations that benefit the region. 

• Equipping  organizations  and  the  public with knowledge and information that will lead to positive change.

• Building endowment  community capital —  to  meet  our  region’s  needs  today  and tomorrow. 

• Providing expert assistance to donors and their advisors in their charitable planning. 

Meeting Need in Our Communities

to instead pay for food and housing.“We have seen a significant increase in people needing

assistance in the past year,” Almaguer said. “Some people have 10, 20 prescriptions a month they need filled. If they can’t get that medication, they get sicker, which leads to lost work time and even hospitalization.”

Those are costs that can get passed on to taxpayers.Through the funding of this program, uninsured, low-

income people now have access to medication they need. Recipients can stay healthy and go to work, allowing them to make money to care for themselves and their families.

Almaguer is from Monterrey, Mexico, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in administration. She got married and moved to Lansing, joining the Cristo Rey staff in 2003. “I like being in contact with people. I like helping people,” she said.

John Roy Castillo, Cristo Rey’s executive director, is effusive in his praise of Almaguer.

“Of all the programs here, this one leverages the most funds,” Castillo said. “Without our service, those people are lost. Veronica fills out all the paperwork. The requirements for each company are totally different, so it’s lost time if you don’t do it right.”

Half of Cristo Rey’s staff is bilingual, speaking Spanish and English, but their services are not limited to mid- Michigan’s Hispanic community. Castillo says half of their clients are white, 25 percent are black, 23 percent are Hispanic and 2 percent are of other ethnic backgrounds.

“We’re a one-stop service to the community, all of the community,” Castillo said. There’s even a CATA bus stop right in front of the main door.

Cristo Rey’s program is vital to mid-Michigan residents, and the Community Foundation is pleased to support it.

new lab, we want to create a free-flowing learning environment with access to as much technology as you need to create the experience you want and learn what you want.” Plans for lab equipment include everything from “myscopes” – hand-held, personal microscopes that can examine all kinds of items, regardless of size or shape – to virtual dissection of a cow’s eye on a 72-inch screen to Flip cameras so visitors can create a documentary about their science discoveries. Riley said one of the goals for ITEC’s new building is to become an after-school homework assistance center for neighborhood students. ITEC will use a rotating set of volunteers from the Lansing IT community and students from MSU and LCC as tutors and mentors. “It’s exciting to picture ITEC students interacting with area programmers, scientists, entrepreneurs and engineers,” Riley said. “ITEC needs to be rooted in a neighborhood to really make an impact. We hope to have a well-worn path between people’s houses and ITEC.” But beyond students coming to their facility, ITEC plans to disperse teachers and tutors into schools and community-based settings such as the Black Child and Family Institute, Cristo Rey, Pattengill Middle School – and Impression 5. “Our vision is to enable Lansing-area residents to acquire flexible, transferable technological skills that will allow them to participate in a fast-paced, global economy that demands science and math skills,” Riley said. “ITEC will build students’ passion for and competence in technology subjects.”

ITEC and I5 have only been connected for a couple of years, but the partnership quickly developed into an important one. Okemos-based global software company TechSmith Corporation gets credit for bringing the two together. “We were looking to develop a future generation of employees for TechSmith,” said Jennifer Middlin, TechSmith’s former community relations manager. “And we were looking for volunteer opportunities for our staff – we have a lot of geeky people who can give away their time to geeky causes.” Middlin looked at ITEC and I5 as two organizations that needed each other. “ITEC was in its infancy 2½ years ago. Kirk had access to MSU and the schools, but no facility to run his programs. Erik had good educators at Impression 5, but the tech piece was missing for them,” she said. With the blessing of president Bill Hamilton, TechSmith pooled its grant money to support the two organizations and help create an official partnership. “They needed each other to move forward,” Middlin said. Because of the community support ITEC and I5 were receiving – from TechSmith, the Dart Foundation and other funders – the Community Foundation saw an opportunity to build on its mission to provide the capstone funds to bring a vital community project to life. “This is a bold move by the Community Foundation,” Fliehman said. “With these two large grants, we’re making the statement that high-tech education is important and is a good investment in our future. These two impact grants are precisely what our mission is about – making our community a better place.”

GRANTS continued from cover

MISSION continued from coverThe Capital Region Community Foundation is …

• “The Center for Charitable Giv-ing,” a public resource for donors, professional advisors, nonprofit agencies, municipalities, cor-porations and others who have questions about how to achieve their charitable goals. 

• A tax-exempt, 501(c)(3) public charity, that is a non-political, philanthropic, local organization. 

• A collection of endowed funds. Named funds are established by donors to satisfy their own charitable wishes. 

• A grantmaking institution. Using income from invested assets, the Community Foundation functions primarily as a grantmaking insti-tution supporting the humanities, education, the environment, health care, human services and public benefit. There is an open 

application process for grants. • A community leader serving as a facilitator, convener or media-tor around significant issues and providing technical advice to area nonprofits. 

• A protector of community capital. Community Foundation funds are invested to preserve the value of the contributions received as permanent assets of the organization. Annual audits are performed and investment man-agers undergo periodic review by the governing body to ensure a reasonable rate of return on all funds entrusted to the Commu-nity Foundation. For our complete 2009 audit, please visit us online at www.crcfoundation.org.

What will your legacy be?

You don’t have to be a millionaire to leave a legacy to your community. Your gift and your neighbor’s gift and your friend’s gift, plus gifts from hundreds of people you’ve never met, combine to create an enduring legacy of giving.

Through the Capital Region Community Foundation, you can contribute to one of the nearly 400 established funds designed to help causes important to you, or you can create your own endowment fund. Contact us today to find out how to make a lasting impact.

WE SINCERELY THANK OUR 2,699 DONORS IN 2009

A complete list of our generous 2009 supporters can be found online at www.crcfoundation.org

I magine losing your home. You, your spouse and your children are on the verge of being homeless.

You look around for a shelter where you can find temporary housing and get some help getting back on your feet.

But men aren’t allowed in the shelter. Only women — and only boys younger than 12.

So your family has to split up at a time it matters most to stay together for support.

That’s the case for many families in search of temporary housing, but not if they can find help through Haven House in East Lansing.

Haven House — formerly known as the Economic Crisis Center — has been providing emergency housing and sup-port services for homeless one-parent and two-parent fami-lies with children since 1983. Most shelters don’t allow men, and many don’t allow teenage boys. Haven House does.

The shelter features 28 beds in seven large bedrooms and

can house up to nine families at one time.“We try to make it as much of a home as

we can,” said Angela Mayeaux, director of Haven House.

Indeed, it does feel like a large home — kids’ artwork hangs on the walls, toys are heaped in office corners and there is a general liveliness to the place.

Mayeaux said the best compliment she ever overheard about Haven House came from a young woman on the phone.

“She and her boyfriend were at the shelter with her child, and she got a call from the child's father. He was mad at her for being in a shelter,” Mayeaux said. “And she told him, ‘They’re here to help. It’s really nice here, it’s really clean. You should come see it.’

“They were our star pupils,” Mayeaux said. “They did ev-erything we asked of them, followed through on every hous-ing and job referral we gave them.”

Haven House gets funding from a variety of grant sources, and the money that comes from the Capital Region Commu-nity Foundation serves an important need. In 2009, the foun-dation awarded $8,801 in grants to Haven House.

“The foundation’s grant money frees up other unrestricted funds we receive so we can continue to expand our programs,” Mayeaux said. “The Community Foundation filled a gap — now operating bills can be paid, we can expand our support staff and grow the services to help our clients.”

Mayeaux said the support goes beyond the money, though.“It’s kind of a quiet way for the community to tell us they

support the work we’re doing,” she said. “When we get the ‘yes’ on a grant, we feel like the community believes in us. That’s something that’s hard to show on paper, but it means so much. All those grant committee people had to say yes. It’s a nice affirmation that they trust us to do good work.”

Keeping families together when it matters the mostHaven House is area’s only homeless shelter designed for moms and dads

thE PEoPlE BEhinD thE FUnDsOkemos teen’s impact lives on through fundA dam Nevells only lived to be

17 years old, but in his short life, he had a broad impact on people as an ath-

lete, student, Boy Scout, friend and community volunteer.

Adam was killed Sept. 4, 2009, when he pulled out of the Okemos High School parking lot and was hit by a pickup truck.

“There’s a pickup truck in everyone’s future,” Adam’s father, Mike Nevells, said, referring to each person’s un-known fate. “You can be a fatalist and say, ‘Why bother,’ or you can make a difference in people’s lives. Adam was a force. He touched so many people.”

His parents, Mike and Elaine, chose to honor Adam’s memo-ry and continue his impact on mid-Michigan by setting up the Adam D. Nevells Memorial Fund through the Capital Region Community Foundation. They started the fund with a contribu-tion from Adam’s life insurance; it continues to grow through on-going donations from the community Adam loved.

The fund will maintain an annual giving program in the areas most important to Adam: academics, music, athletics, Boy Scouts and his church.

“All the stories we heard from his friends, from peo-ple we didn’t know, Adam was doing these daily acts of kindness we didn’t know about,” Mike Nevells said. “He was always helping people.”

Nevells said the endowment fund in Adam’s memory has given his family something to hold on to. “This fund gave us something to focus on at a time when we could have stayed in the house wearing all black. I thought, ‘I can either give up or we can do something positive.’ We chose the positive.”

At the time of his death, Adam was the captain of Okemos High School’s varsity water polo and wrestling teams; he played baritone saxophone in the school’s marching and con-cert bands; he was working on his final Eagle Scout project. “It was common for Adam to tell others to ‘suck it up,’ because if he could do both band and athletics, any-one could,” said Mark Stice, Okemos High’s band director. “There was no room for whining as far as he was concerned.” Annual gifts from Adam’s fund will be given to the Okemos High School athletic and band boosters for 20 years, to the Boy Scouts for 10 years, to Adam’s church, Martin Luther Chapel, and through the Community Foundation forever to support a variety of community youth programs.

Adam

MISSION continued from cover

Photo courtesy of Lansing State Journal

MISSION STATEMENT

The mission of the Capital Region Community Foundation is to serve the

charitable needs and enhance the quality of life in Ingham, Eaton and Clinton counties.

We serve and seek out a wide range of donors to build permanent endowments that

are used to meet the changing needs and

interests of our community.

Mark alleyChairChief of Police (ret.),Lansing Police Dept.

nancy littleChair ElectVP, attorney/shareholder,Bernick Omer Radner & Ouellette

Denise schroederSecretary CEO,Pension Trend

Douglas a. MielockTreasurerAttorney/ shareholder,Foster, Swift, Collins & Smith, PC

John abbottPresident,Summit Community Bank

Diana Rodriguez algraExecutive director,Volunteer Centers of Michigan

Charles Blockett Jr.President,Charles Blockett Jr. & Associates

Kira Carter-RobinsonPresident and CEO, Sparrow Spe-cialty Hospital

sam l. DavisJail Administrator,Ingham County Sheriff’s Office

David DonovanFounder/ Consultant,Donovan Company, LLC

nancy a. ElwoodFinancial advisor,Merrill Lynch

Vincent FerrisPresident,Custom Home Interiors, Inc.

Bo GarciaDirector of Stra-tegic Planning & Economic Development,Lansing Com-munity College

Pat GillespiePresident,Gillespie Group

andy hoppingExecutive Vice President/CFO,Jackson National Life

nate JanssenYouth Action Committee,Student Trustee

Joan Jackson JohnsonDirector, Human Relations & Comm. Service Department,City of Lansing

Michael KingVice President/General Manager,WILX-TV

Robert KoltCEO/President,Kolt Communi-cations Inc.

Dorothy E. MaxwellPresident/CEO,Max Weingar Group

helen Pratt MickensProfessor and As-sociate Dean of Public Relations,Thomas M. Cooley Law School

Michael nobachManaging Director,Clinton County Road Commis-sion (Ret.)

Brian PriesterPresident and Publisher,Lansing State Journal

Mary J. schaferCPA/Partner,Plante & Moran, PLLC

sharon h. solomonExecutive Director,National Alliance for the Mentally Ill

Mitchell tomlinsonCEO,Peckham, Inc.

Carmen turnerPresident,Boys & Girls Club of Lansing

arianne UmfleetYouth Action Committee,Student Trustee

steven WebsterVice President of Governmental Affairs,Michigan State University

Ryan WilsonAttorney/ Shareholder,Fraser Trebil-cock Davis & Dunlap, PC

Dennis W. FliehmanPresident and CEO

Brad PattersonVice President of Program

Richard ComstockVice President of Finance

Robin Miner-swartzDirector of Communications

Pauline PaschProgram Officer/ YAC Advisor

traci GouldingExecutive Assistant

lisa levandowskiFinance Associate

GIFTSWe live in a generous, caring community. In spite of tough economic times, the Community Foundation received 3,092 gifts worth $3.4 million in 2009. Many donors made special gifts to augment their funds and ensure sufficient revenue for grantmaking or stepped forward with something extra to help with emergency needs. We are grateful to each and every one of our donors.

FUNDSThe Community Foundation holds a collection of 378 charitable funds created by individu-als, families, businesses and organizations. In 2009 we added 14 new funds.

FINANCESIn 2008, the Community Foundation experienced a total endowment value decline of 26.5 per-cent (compared to an overall market decline of 37 percent). The good news is we’re recovering. By the end of 2009, we posted an annual investment return of 25 percent.

GRANTSIn 2009, the Capital Region Community Foundation made 693 grants totaling more than $3.2 million to support many worthy causes and make our community a better place. From scholar-ships and after-school programs to health screenings and hous-ing assistance, those charitable dollars are making a real impact, helping improve life for thousands of people in mid-Michigan. Since we began making grants in 1990, the Commu-nity Foundation has distributed nearly $26 million.

2009 bOaRd Of diReCtORs aNd CuRReNt staff

GOOd WORK bY tHe NuMbeRs

For a complete list of 2009’s grants and donors, visit www.crcfoundation.org

6035 Executive Drive, Suite 104Lansing, MI 48911

(517) 272-2870www.crcfoundation.org

For good. For ever . sm