The Community Foundation of the Ozarks awarded $10,000 to Bright Futures Carthage through the Louis L. and Julia Dorothy Coover Charitable Foundation in partnership with Commerce Trust.
The grant is designated for vision needs and emergency funding for COVID-19 related needs for students.
Bright Futures Carthage received one of 16 Coover Regional Grants totaling $250,000, which were presented via Zoom on Thursday, April 16. Bright Futures Carthage is a nonprofit partner with the CFO through the Carthage Community Foundation.
Director Greg Spink said Bright Futures Carthage has a goal of ensuring that every student in Carthage R-9 has 20/20 vision by the end of 2020. The grant will help support exams and corrective lenses that aren’t covered by family insurance, Medicaid or other sources of funding. A portion of the grant also will support the effort to provide meals while kids are out of school due to the pandemic closures.
“We’re working hard with Carthage R-9 to make sure our familes are taken care of,” Spink said.
The grant program initially closed before the pandemic affected southwest Missouri. The CFO staff and grantmaking committee worked with recipients to provide flexibility if funds needed to be re-purposed for COVID-19-related needs.
“The Coover Charitable Foundation is so proud to provide this much-needed annual grantmaking opportunity for rural Missouri,” said Commerce Trust Senior Vice President Jill Reynolds. “A hallmark of philanthropy is its creative and flexible approach to funding, which is essential this year for many of these grantees extending their resources to support COVID-19 efforts in their communities.”
The grants are made possible through the generosity of the late Julia Dorothy Coover, who worked for Commerce Bank for 30 years. She established the Louis L. and Julia Dorothy Coover Charitable Foundation in 1992 to honor her husband’s memory. Since then, the Coover Charitable Foundation has awarded about $5.95 million in grants to nonprofit agencies and rural schools across the Ozarks.
The Community Foundation of the Ozarks is a regional public charitable foundation established in 1973 that provides asset and resource development, grantmaking and public leadership through a network of donors, 49 affiliate foundations and more than 600 nonprofit partners across central and southern Missouri.
