Housing
The Community Foundation has a track record of working alongside various community partners to find solutions to our area’s housing crisis. Since 2017, the Community Foundation has been a core partner of the Little Traverse Bay Housing Partnership, working to bring awareness to the crisis. Throughout our organization’s history, we have supported affordable housing through grants both for building homes as well as for organizations working in the housing space. Recently our investments have focused on predevelopment costs for new housing, as well as ensuring one new middle-income apartment building comes to fruition in Petoskey.
Child Care
Child care is an essential part of our community’s fabric. Early care and education services, such as child care, are a necessary support for any community and any economy to thrive. Throughout the country, communities have struggled to support a system of accessible, high-quality, affordable early care and education services. To address the needs of Emmet County to have a sustainable child care system, North Central Michigan College has embarked on a multi-year effort to provide innovative solutions to our area’s child care shortage. We are pleased to support the NCMC Child Care Initiative which will provide an evidence-based plan for a sustainable child care system designed to meet the county’s needs now and into the future.
Local Food
At the heart of the rural character of our area is local agriculture. The Community Foundation’s investment in local food initiatives literally grew from conversations about land use in the mid-2000s. Our community identified and valued “the area’s rural character and small town atmosphere,” and the Community Foundation saw an opportunity to play a leading role in increasing the viability of local agriculture. Since 2012, Community Foundation grants have helped bring awareness to local food and farming, provided increased access to fresh local foods, and helped organizations working in the space grow their capacity. Our investment in these earlier strategic initiatives have served as building blocks for what is today a vibrant local food system connected to community through our school cafeterias and classrooms, farmers markets and food pantries.
Clean Energy
Building on the momentum of both community interest and of past work in clean energy, the Community Foundation partnered with Groundwork Center for Resilient Communities to support its clean energy policy work in Emmet County. That partnership helped bring both additional awareness and energy, if you’ll pardon the pun, to initiatives throughout Emmet County. In 2020, the City of Petoskey boldly and unanimously committed to 100 percent clean energy by 2035. Additionally, grant dollars supported the City of Petoskey’s energy audits to improve the energy efficiency of its buildings. Another grant helped with the installation of a solar array at Pellston Public Schools. These foundational pieces ensure that Emmet County’s clean energy future is looking bright!