Good morning, good morning, and morning and welcome, welcome, welcome. It is a time now or our community connection right here on K one one. Do you trust miss Laura. How are you doing.
I'm very well. Thank you for having me.
Well, you know, we've got something really kind of unique and special coming up. And first of all, tell us about your organization and what it does, and then we're going to get into the function itself, because this is going to be fun.
Yes, So we are the Bartlesville Community Foundation. We're a grant making entity. So we award grants through different programs. So maybe that's you coming in and starting a fund and supporting the things that you like to do. Or we have general grants that we have competitive cycles for and that also includes you know, scholarships and so we just finished kind of our biggest scholarship cycle ever.
Wow.
And we are opening a new grant cycle right now. So if you are an organization that is on the hunt for grants, we have six opportunities open right now. I'll close in the beginning of September. And so we're really here to be kind of a convener for our community, bridging that gap between funders with an interest in organizations with a need and we're conto it right and working with our community as we identify, you know, ways we can improve.
Wow, in a nutshell, that's a lot.
It's a lot, and it's a lot of work.
But it's happy work too, because you know you're you're finding partnerships that.
Work exactly that. That is pretty fun. It's pretty energizing, I imagine it is.
Every little every success is a big success when it comes to that. Now, for years we've we've had the legacy families and the big dinner and the everything. But we've changed a little bit and it's going to be something that's actually going to be a little bit more accessible for folks. Yes, and it's going to be actually darn cool. Tell us about it.
Well, I think it's darn cool. But you know, I'm going to brag about it. And you can tell me if you if you've.
Already told you, because I know about it.
So we have. I have coined a new event.
It'll be on September seventeenth. We're calling it the Celebrate Together event. It's a luncheon and rather than a black tied dinner, so it's a forty dollars ticket and join us on September seventeenth.
We will be talking about the work that the Foundation has been doing.
So we will be unveiling a couple of videos that promote the foundation.
One of those being an impact video.
That summarizes the things that we did in twenty twenty three, which is a lot, which is a lot. We had more than two million dollars an impact in twenty twenty three, and so we are we want to talk about that. We want to talk about the groups that helped us get there and the people who made those grants to support the community and the communities that they love with that more than two million dollars. And then we're going to unveil a promotional video, which we won't do very often.
We'll do a promotional video just to talk about the foundation as a quick resource. You know. We'll probably let it live on our website as the Legacy Family videos have that way. When you asked me a question, Hey, what the BCF do, I can send you send you a little video exactly. And so those are the ways that we're going to talk about the BCF. But we're unveiling two new awards.
This is exciting.
This is the exciting part. I mean I got through. That's the boring part.
I'm in BCF.
We're exciting. We're not exciting compared to this. And so we had an open nomination cycle for what we're calling the Community Catalyst Award in memory of Charlie and Quirky Bowerman. And so the Bowerman's had an incredible impact on our organization. They had an incredible impact in our community and the sustainability of our community, and so we really wanted to capture that essence and recognize folks that are doing that today in our community. And so we're going to award
a Community Catalyst Award on our charliean Quirky Bronment. Now we're going to announce that individual in advance, So we will announce that an individual next week to the community so that they can all join in and come celebrate that person's work together at that event. And then the second thing that we're doing is what we're calling to
Tell Your Story grant. That is a twenty thousand dollars grant to an organization in our community to support three things general operating Five thousand dollars of that grant will go to their general operating they can use it for whatever they want to. Five thousand dollars of it will go toward a promotional video that incentivizes or talks about how building endowment can help that organization. And then the last ten thousand dollars of it will go toward an
endowment for that organization. So if they have one, that's great, it'll be a restricted gift to that organization's endowment. If they don't, we can start one for them.
Wow, this is impactful all the way around.
Yes, I like this, Thank you.
Well, this is going to be exciting.
And we're unveiling that one at the event, so you have to come and be there in order to know who is going to get that twenty thousand dollars grant.
Oh yeah, I know some hungry people. It'd be there.
Hey, it's going to be great lunch melodies, catering, so there's nothing wrong.
You can go there.
We're having lasagna, salad roles. You know, we're going to roll out of there.
Wow. Wow, So this is really going to be great.
This is going to be at the community Center.
Yep. All right, And where do we go to get the tickets?
So you can buy tickets on the Foundation's website bartlesvillecf dot org. And we've actually just completely redone the website. So go on there and tell me whether or not you like it.
I can voucher that because Laura was trying and she goes, oh, where did I put that on the website. It's brand new and it looks great.
Thank you.
Yes, it's easier to navigate than you think, folks, you know, so go on there and take a look. See what the foundation is all about, what they do. Play the videos, of course, and get your tickets while they last, because they get the feeling these are going to be what they call faster.
We're at about. We probably have a forty tickets left.
That's it.
That's it. Forty tickets left.
Wow. Ye, So if you haven't done it, let's get her done by lunch today.
Get it done.
Oh my heaven's sakes. Now, you've been there for a while, almost three years.
So I've been in my role almost three years, but I've been with the foundation seven and a half years.
Oh okay, very good, very good, And no two days are the same because you just never know what's gonna as they say, walk in.
That door exactly.
We've grown so much in the last seven eight years. You know, we went from a place where we had one hundred and thirty ish fund relationships now we have over two hundred and so we've just continued to grow the service that we've provided and that's really resulted in us been able to have some flexibility with impact in the way that community needs us to have an impact like this grant.
We're kind of in a select group that a lot of communities can't do this, right. Yeah, and I think there's only a handful in Oklahoma that do well.
So there's only four I may have that number wrong.
There's only four community foundations in the state of Oklahoma that are staffed and running community foundations.
That's really unique. You look at.
Kansas and they're there are quite a few more, I mean, probably thirty community foundations, and each one of those has really what we call robust affiliate relationship, So that community foundation represents a region and then maybe each county has an affiliate relationship that's a volunteer board that represents that geographic area, and then they're able to get the structure and the credibility and the accreditation that comes with being a partner with that host Foundation, and so we have
that too. We at the BCF, we have three affiliates, the Blueston Medical Foundation, the Barsview Public Schools Foundation, and the Nowada Community Foundation. So we do all the back office work for those organizations. And we are now a nationally accredited community foundation. We finished our accreditation in the spring and we've received that kind of checkmark on our on our credibility, and so those organizations, because they're under our umbrella, also received that benefit.
Nice. I remember doing the news story on that. That was that was a pretty exciting time. Yeah, a lot of hard work went into that.
It's been a lot it's been a long process, but you know, it has to be.
Yeah, you got to get it done. But wow, it's incredible. Hats off to you guys.
Thank you well.
Right, and like I said, we're you know, number four, we're the large, the third largest in the state, the second the first largest in the state, Tulsa Community Foundation, you know, but we're in there, we're in their backyard.
They're the second largest in the country.
Oh that's a little bit of a shadow.
Only second to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation. So they they are really doing some incredible work and We're just glad to be able to watch and see what we can do here.
Well, that is great. We'll keep up the good work.
Thank you.
And again the website again.
Websites Bartlesville cf dot org.
All right, lord, thank you for popping by. I know you got a thousand and one things to do before this thing takes off here in just a couple of weeks. It's my pleasure, but that's off to get you did good, all right, Thank you, folks. And you've been watching and listening to our community connection right here on K one, the one you trust.