The Park City Community Foundation has raised over a million dollars in the past month. Executive Director Katie Wright says the effort shows the local community’s commitment to helping locals impacted by COVID-19.
Wright told KPCW that they got donations from over 300 people, ranging from $15 to a $200,000 donation from Vail CEO Rob Katz and his wife Elana Amsterdam.
The Community Foundation itself put in $50,000 from its operating reserves, and the same amount was donated by Park City Municipal.
Wright said everybody understands the needs that locals are facing.
“We know that just shortly after things shut down, we had surveyed local families, many of the immigrant community. And 93 percent of people had either completely lost their job or had their hours dramatically reduced. And I think if we’re being clear-eyed about the future, it’s gonna take a long time to get people back to work in a substantive way. So people are gonna struggle to pay bills for a prolonged amount of time.”
Wright said the money has been allocated among a half-dozen recipients.
“We’ve granted $300,000 so far to seven different organizations. The primary recipient has been the Christian Center of Park City. All of our grants are unrestricted. We’re really proud to ensure that non-profits have the ability to act proactively with the funding we give them. But we know that the bulk of that funding is really supporting their Basic Need Assistance.”
Funding also goes to the Peace House, and the People’s Health Clinic.
She said that locals can certainly donate directly to the programs that the Foundation is funding. But she said that the Foundation has an important role too, because it can be flexible.
“So I think we all know that the future is quite uncertain. And so by making a donation that can adapt to the changes that we see a week from now, or two weeks from now, you’re really giving non-profits the ability to be as proactive as possible. Early on we learned from other communities that have lived through crisis that we don’t want to be a community with 15,000 masks, but we need a respirator. We wanna be sure that we can be responsive to needs as they arise.”
She said that, unfortunately, their fundraising efforts are going to be needed for quite a while.
“We think that a million dollars is a really good start for the urgent phase, perhaps it will get us through the stabilization phase. But I think it is realistic for the community to plan for at least six months of a big portion of our community not having the hours and work that they are accustomed to.”
Katie Wright, Executive Director for the Park City Community Foundation
