STANWOOD — All the activities at Warm Beach Camp on a recent sunny day had an air of celebration, from check-in to recreation. When a group of campers and staff hauled one of the teens up to a zipline platform, they cheered him on. When he zipped back down to earth, they whooped even louder.
One of those visiting that day was Stephen Estes, a donor to Special Friends Camp, which is targeted at people with special needs from age 16 up. These include people with autism, Down syndrome or other learning disabilities.
Each camper worked with a buddy — a staff member or volunteer — who stuck by the camper all day.
Estes, a retired teacher who has had experience working with special needs kids, wanted to see what his charitable gift was supporting.
He’d been looking for causes to support, he said, and the Greater Everett Community Foundation had indicated to him that there was a cause here that needed some financial support.
“Because it was special needs, it clicked,” Estes said.
Much of the activity at Special Friends — indeed, all of Warm Beach, which might have five groups of programs running at any one time — is supported by donations, said Ed McDowell, the non-profit’s CEO.
That makes connecting with people like Estes all the more important.
And that’s a niche that the Greater Everett Community Foundation has found works well, said Maddy Metzger-Utt, the foundation’s president and CEO.
The eight-year-old foundation has grown an average of 16 percent annually over the last seven years, Metzger-Utt said.
Based upon the foundation’s investment strategy and some expected future gifts, the foundation’s endowment of about $15 million right now is expected to double to $30 million or more in the next five years, she said.
With increased resources, the foundation has identified several areas where it can apply its strengths to have a positive impact.
“The community is asking us to take a bigger role with collaborations and to take more … community leadership,” Metzger-Utt said.
Foundation funding will allow the Sultan School District to hire part-time staff to coordinate eligibility requirements for mental health services and other resources.
“Counselors shouldn’t be making calls to get kids clothing, schools shouldn’t have to figure out how to feed kids over Christmas break,” Metzger-Utt said.
In many cases, it’s getting people and groups to talk to each other in ways that they haven’t been able to, said Karri Matau, the foundation’s vice president of grantmaking and partnerships.
The question the foundation seeks to answer, Matau said, is “How could a little bit of money help a lot of people all moving in the same direction?”
The foundation has identified four areas to pursue. The first is connecting donors with causes, which also includes finding people who want to serve on the boards of directors of nonprofits.
“Over last two years we’ve found a huge group of people not being able to find boards,” Matau said.
The foundation’s “LeaderLink” initiative, what she bills as a Match.com for board directors, helps build those bridges.
The second area focuses on helping professional advisers who work with foundation donors and clients — lawyers, accountants, financial professionals — negotiate the world of philanthropy.
The third area is to increase the interest of donors in economic development issues.
The foundation saw this after the March 22, 2014 mudslide near Oso, when it established a fund that helped the cities of Arlington and Darrington with economic planning so they could rebound from the economic hit they took.
This is a brand new initiative, Metzger-Utt said.
“We don’t even know what our options are yet,” she said.
The final part of the strategy will focus on bringing more financial resources into Snohomish County as a whole. Again, its’ a new initiative, and it doesn’t even necessarily involve raising money for the foundation, but rather involving the entire community.
“It’s not just our foundation assets, it’s our community wealth and assets,” Matau said.
In this way the foundation would become a support system for the community as a whole.
A lot of these new initiatives are expected to be announced at the foundation’s annual breakfast on Oct. 1, along with a renewed focus on supporting all of Snohomish County.
“We’ve always been about every part of our community, every part that makes a community healthy and thrive,” Matau said.
Chris Winters: 425-374-4165; cwinters@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @Chris_At_Herald.
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