FOUNDATION
Forest Highlands Foundation
Ethan Braunstein MD, Past Chair, Forest Highlands Foundation Board
Your Foundation is now in the midst of its busiest time of the year. A successful Denise Martinez Tournament was organized by Vickie Selzer and her hard-working team, and we are looking forward to entertaining our donors at the thank you event on July 8. This event will give our donors a chance to meet some of the directors of groups we support and to find out more about how the contributions are being put to good use. Our annual appeal has begun, and our grant committee is reviewing applications and interviewing spokespeople for all the organizations that have applied. We have divided our committee into subcommittees reviewing grants in health care, social services, youth, and education. We will then prioritize funding decisions, and along with other local foundations we will fund all the grants applications that we think are worthy. We’ll have some of the results for you next month, and of course there will be a complete account in the annual report. We recently had the opportunity to visit Housing Solutions/ Sharon Manor (HSNA) to get up to date about recent developments there. As I’ve mentioned in the past, HSNA provides housing and social services for up to two years to victims of domestic abuse. Recently we helped HSNA to acquire an old motel on Route 66, renamed Jojo’s Place. Our initial seed money of $50000 led to government funding of the remainder of the 6-million-dollar project through use of unspent COVID funds. This facility of 44 units will
provide additional housing so that the capacity of HSNA will be substantially increased. Ultimately the goal will be to provide more permanent housing, perhaps in a stepped arrangement, so that families in the current facility, Sharon Manor, will have a place to settle for the longer term while new clients can move into Sharon Manor. One of the things we look for in all our grant funding is synergy between local institutions. In the case of HSNA, case management at Jojo’s place will be outsourced to Catholic Charities, a group with enormous expertise in this area. Many of the referrals to HSNA come through the “Front Door,” a collaborative plan among many of the human services institutions we fund, housed at Catholic Charities and Flagstaff Shelter Services, in which clients are referred immediately to the appropriate agencies without having to try to find the suitable services on their own. This is just one example of how many of the local organizations work cooperatively.
THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT
As always, we thank you for helping to make Flagstaff a better place to live for all of us.
Ethan Braunstein MD Past Chair, Forest Highlands Foundation Board beigestein@gmail.com
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JULY 2023 | VOICE IN THE PINES
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