Hello WIN,
Thanks to your generosity and kindness, we were able to present two big grants of $122,376 each at our October 7 Grants Celebration. That’s a record amount, from a record 302 members. Clearly WIN has emerged as a group that empowers good results for our Nebraska communities and for the University of Nebraska thanks to your generosity and your other-focused visionary investments.
As you know, we had to pick just one grant recipient from the University of Nebraska system and one from the greater community—out of a record 117 grant applications. The hard part is sorting through this array of great ideas and coming up with our collective decision on how to invest our money.
This year, The University of Nebraska grant went to UNMC’s College of Nursing for the Emergency Nurse Practitioner Certificate Program, which will provide enhanced education in responding to medical emergencies.
The second grant of equal value went to the Foster Care Closet based in Lincoln—their Mobile Closet project can now reach more areas of the state to serve some of our most vulnerable kids, providing them with care and dignity.
Together we are more generous and powerful than we ever could be alone.
My sincere thanks to Jaci Lindburg for leading the Grants Committee that sorted through 117 grant applications and did an in-depth analysis of each opportunity, leading to our final recipients based on your informed votes. These are truly bold, innovative projects worthy of our support.
So now we begin our work of building our pool of funds for the 2025 grant recipients. What if we could reach $250,000—think of the remarkable positive impact that could have. All funds given to WIN beginning July 1 of this year and through June 30, 2025 will go to the 2025 grants. Your donations are used with a lot of thoughtful care as a true investment in our communities. As of this writing we have xx members for the 2025 grant cycle—a great start. Please invite others who might be interested in being a part of WIN.
This fall WIN surpassed the $2 Million mark in total grant funding over the course of its 13-year history. That’s a rather bold statement about the power of our shared philanthropic adventure, and also about the power of kindness. A lot of good has flowed from WIN’s attention to needs since 2011. A lot of lives in Nebraska are better because WIN is backing big ideas that respond to real needs.
I am so fortunate to be working with three dedicated and talented committee chairs, Jaci on Grants, Jill Davis on Membership and Sarah Button on Education. At the end of the year we will hand off the leadership of WIN to incoming co-chairs Lisa Smith and Karen Linder. Lisa was the founding chair of WIN and returns with Karen to continue building our momentum. I know we are in great hands.
Lisa and Karen were named as incoming chairs along with committee chairs Halley Kruse (Grants), Peg Slagle and Tina Spatz (Membership co-chairs) and Betsy Tonniges (Education).
On a personal note, the opportunity to chair WIN for the past two years has been a tremendously gratifying experience that I treasure—because of you, our talented leadership team and WIN Director Morgan Holen.
Thank you for your heartful, generous support. Together we WIN.
Meg