Making an Impact

What are you passionate about? How do you want to improve life in the Winona area? And could you use funding to support this effort or passion? The Winona Community Foundation has matching grant dollars to start a new Field of Interest Fund. What’s your interest? Nature? Animals? Children? During our Founders Event on October 6th, 2020, we celebrated JC Pfieffer as the 2020 recipient of its Founders Award. During this event, we [...]

You want our community to thrive, and we want to be your partner. Since 1987, the Winona Community Foundation has served as a trusted partner and resource for a thriving community, touching thousands of lives across the region. When you invest in the Winona Community Foundation, you take on our community’s biggest challenges -- and biggest opportunities. You may or may not know and understand the work of our Foundation. A few examples of [...]

What are you passionate about? How do you want to improve life in the Winona area? And could you use funding to support this effort or passion? The Winona Community Foundation has matching grant dollars to start a new Field of Interest Fund. What’s your interest? Nature? Animals? Children? During our Founders Event on October 6th,  we celebrated JC Pfieffer as the 2020 recipient of its Founders Award. During this event, we thanked [...]

2020 Founders Award JC Pfeiffer: Planting a Seed “Everybody wins when they invest time, talent or treasure into their community.” – JC Pfeiffer For JC Pfeiffer, a simple phrase such as “planting a seed” has many meanings. On October 6, 2020, he was honored for all the seeds he planted in Winona as the Winona Community Foundation presented him with its 2020 Founders Award. This award is given to an individual in [...]

Cycle 2 Community Grant Results COVID-19 has changed many aspects of daily life. For local nonprofits, they have stayed focused on their missions and adapted to a different reality while trying to manage losses of income or increased demand for their services. In response to the global pandemic and its effects on local nonprofits in Winona, the Winona Community Foundation Board of Directors voted to suspend the normal community grant program and focus [...]

A Surprise Gift From a Person Known for her Giving Heart Introducing the Ramona L. Jezewski English Fund Ramona L. (Ladewig) Jezewski English lived a lifetime in the Winona area yet traveled widely, leaving her mark not only on people in Winona, but all around the world. Because of a gift designated in her will to the Winona Community Foundation, she will be giving back to Winona, and the people she loved, far beyond [...]

Stronger Together Led by the Laird Norton Family Foundation The Laird Norton enterprise and their partners raised over $1,000,000 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and distributed funds nationally to the Seattle Foundation, Pierce County Connected, Washington Food Fund, and the Winona Community Foundation COVID-19 Relief Fund. “We understand our values of community outreach and partnership are even more important during these times, and we will continue to do what we can in support [...]

Connecting Passions to Projects Introducing the Donna Helble Literacy Fund A monetary gift left by a passionate educator and child literacy advocate will impact thousands of Winona County’s youngest residents. Donna Helble was known for her full and benevolent life. Although Donna is no longer with us, she created a legacy of generosity through her will and gave a gift to the Winona Community Foundation for the purpose of promoting childhood literacy. This makes [...]

The Winona Community Foundation (WCF) awarded eight grants totaling $45,200 to area nonprofit organizations in its first-cycle of 2020 after reviewing 25 qualified applications exceeding $200,000 in requests on March 13. Funds to support the Community Grant program are made possible in part through gifts made through wills from; Ramona L. Jezewski English and Wilmer & Beverly Larson. Community grants are also supported by a percentage of the General Trust fund of the Winona Community [...]

Competitive community grants are a common element of community Foundations. The funds to support these grants come from annual donations, gifts made through a wills and estates, investment returns, and administrative fees. Prior to 2012, community grants were limited to no more than $2,500 per request with an annual total given of $20,000. While this made an impact on local nonprofits, the Board of Directors wanted to do more. So, when the Foundation received [...]

“Education and children’s literature were Donna Helble’s passions. In 1973, she moved to Winona to take a position at Goodview elementary where she taught grades one through four in the Program for Learning in Accordance with Needs. In 1988, she began her career at Winona State University as a professor of education. She chaired the popular community-wide “reading in the Mall” event for 25 years that promoted children’s literacy in Winona and the surrounding [...]

Lyndon Pierce was a World War II vet, trucker and electrician. His wife, Jennie, taught in a rural Winona County school and then became a bookkeeper. Twenty-two years after they both passed, W-K Elementary School kindergarteners benefited from a generous gift from their estate that was given to the Winona Community Foundation. Looking to honor the Pierce’s passion for education, the Winona Community Foundation Board of Directors chose to request grant proposals from the [...]