Our Newest Fund: The Martha and Mya After-school Fund

PCF is pleased to announce this new fund is open and ready to accept donations:
https://spccf.fcsuite.com/erp/donate/create?funit_id=1060

The Martha and Mya After-school Fund was established to help maintain funding for an important after-school program.

Why Martha and Mya?

Martha Murfin was one of the founders of the Coastal Alliance For Youth, which became our local Boys and Girls Club. She understood the absolute necessity of creating a program to ensure that the kids of our community had a safe place to go after school. In those first days, she said that funding should be easy. 

       "We just need 200 people in this community to give $1000 per year, and our kids will be taken care of after school," was her motto.

Mya is one of the kids who has grown up being able to spend time after school at the Club. When Mya learned of the closing she said 

        "Mom, money doesn't grow on trees but sometimes it grows on roses." 

She had taped her summer clam raking earnings ($152) to a rose she has been preserving since her 11th birthday and asked her mom to bring it to Club. She said, 

        "I know this won't solve the problem but every little bit helps, right?"

These two amazing ladies show the spirit that our community needs to fund a sustainable after school program. We are much stronger and safer if our kids have a safe place to go after school. While the current board is committed to making sure that they do the work to reopen the Club, our community needs to show that we can and will support an after-school program for our kids.

Funding Details

A group of community members opened this fund through South Pacific County Community Foundation to ensure ongoing support of an after school program. 

It costs approximately $200,000 to run an after school program on an annual basis. In donating to this fund, money will only be released once there is at least $100,000 in the fund and an additional $100,000 secured in grants and other funds to operate. If we do not reach that goal, money will be returned to donors. 

Annual donation levels are as follows:

     Martha's Legacy      $10,000 and above

     Corporate Sponsor  $5,000-$9,999

     Business Sponsor    $2000

     Platinum Sponsor    $1000

     Gold Sponsor           $500

     Mya's Club               $152-$500

Annual donations are encouraged. You may make monthly recurring donations. 

The foundation accepts donations from donors who wish to be anonymous. 

Please consider becoming an enduring donor, someone who donates every month, year after year. 

https://spccf.fcsuite.com/erp/donate/create?funit_id=1060

"The greatness of a community is most accurately measured by the compassionate action of its members" Coretta Scott King

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Keeping Current with Compliance

October 18, 2019

Kathleen Sayce

Think you are fine with your organization’s registrations? Luckily for all of us, there’s some leeway of months to years to get caught up if you let important registrations drop. But why not review it all again, just to be sure, in the local class next week?

The next local class, Let’s Go Legal, is Friday, October 25th, 1-4 p.m. at the Columbia Pacific Heritage Museum. You can sign up on line, or walk in. The fee is $15 for members of WNP, or $20 for not-yet-members. 

This is a return to the topic of our very first class, three years ago:  Compliance.

Make sure that your organization is properly registered in the state as a nonprofit, as a charity if it takes donations and issues tax receipts, and with the IRS. 

WNP works with Washington Secretary of State on the course material to ensure it is current and accurate, WA SOS also underwrites part of the cost. The speaker can come here because it is also supported by grants from Medina Foundation. Pacific Community Foundation is very grateful that WA SOS and Medina make it possible for them to be taught in person in our community. 

This column could be subtitled “Practice is Never a Waste of Time”. 

When I worked for ShoreBank Pacific, annual recertification in dozens of topics, from safety and security to how to watch for signs of money laundering, was required. The first year was interesting; the next couple of years were annoying, and after that, I understood that if I did not revisit these topics regularly, I would slowly drift away from good practices. Now at a community foundation, I realize that regular reviews are just as important here as they were at the bank. 

At the bank, we had online courses to take, with tests, and certificates, proof that we had done the time. In the nonprofit sector, we are on our own for tests and certificates, but there’s a great resource available for any nonprofit officer or board member, at Washington Nonprofits. For a nominal annual fee, you can watch classes online or attend classes in person where it fits with your schedule. 

WNP link to courses: https://washingtonnonprofits.org/learning/

The foundation is also helping the Chinook Observer review the list of nonprofit organizations that go in its Giving Back insert, which we hope will come out in late November or early December this year. 

When I reviewed the organizations in last year's insert, checking to see who is still active, I was startled to find some had closed down a decade ago. So I requested the current nonprofits list for Pacific County from the Secretary of State—and I was startled all over again by the organizations that are now gone, and the new ones that have appeared. 

Another discrepancy is those organizations that operate on donations, but are not registered as charities. 

Do your organization a favor. Take this class, then plan to re-take courses regularly, just to make sure you aren’t overlooking something that might be critically important.