Just over $23,000 has been re-invested back into the community, thanks to the Plum Coulee Community Foundation.
    
The Board doled out its 2024 annual grants at its annual general meeting on Thursday, which followed another successful soup and pie that raised $2,300 hundred dollars for the Foundation.

"We hold, typically, two soup and pies every year and the support, the attendance and the donation of the soups and the pies, is just unbelievable," said Board Chair Levi Taylor, noting the Foundation is always grateful for the community's support. "The community has always stood behind this foundation and generously donated."

The Foundation's net assets, including investments, grew to $835,199 over the past year. This generated just over $23,000 in interest, which was doled out to 8 local organizations at Thursday's AGM. Taylor was asked if the Board will be making a push to grow those assets to $1 million.

"I think there's always plans to increase the size of the Foundation or endowment," he said. "In a community this size, making big jumps can be a little challenging but our goal is to just continue spreading the word of the Foundation and make people aware of what it is, that your donation will last generations upon generations."

Levi TaylorLevi Taylor

Meantime, Taylor says the Board will be putting a particular focus on growing its newly established Administrative Fund in the coming year, with the goal of eventually hiring an administrator.

"The last couple of years, we've been kind of in a shared work program, and part of it was through Endow Manitoba where they paid half the salary of an administrator and our foundation paid for the other part," he explained. 

However, that arrangement has since shifted, and the Plum Coulee Foundation began accessing the Winkler Community Foundation's administrator. Now, Taylor says its necessary for the Board to find a long-term solution. 

"Operating a charity, there's lots of regulations and different accounting requirements and administrative requirements. Lots of forms to be filled out. So, it's important that we stay on top of that stuff, and it all gets filed appropriately and that we manage peoples' money properly and according to the government."

Taylor noted, a possibility would be to again partner with another area community foundation.