A $200,000 grant from Community Foundation for Northeast Michigan (CFNEM) will help the Alpena County George N. Fletcher Public Library renovate and modernize its facilities.
From 2004 until the present, CFNEM has been the custodian of the Alpena County Library Fund. The library's board of directors decided to establish a $5,000 endowed fund to ensure a steady stream of money. Since then, the fund has grown through individual donations and investment income.
“The Community Foundation is very important to us. The investments the community foundation makes on our behalf are a big piece of income. Until now, we haven’t touched it. This is a once-in-a-generation project, so this was a good time to use those funds. I’ve worked with a lot of boards, and board members often have concerns about only having access to the interest of endowments. “he said.
“Using agency funds at the community foundation is a good tool for meeting that concern. In addition to the agency fund, several donor endowment funds benefit the library. We can only use money that has been donated to us with the community foundation. We can’t transfer tax money to the foundation,” Library Director Eric Magness-Eubank said.
“If this funding were not available, we would have faced many hard choices. We might have had to use nonlocal contractors. We probably would have had to reduce our services over the past year even more. We have tried to get the biggest bang out of each dollar spent on this project. Trying to cut $200,000 out of this project would have meant not getting nearly as much value for the public. It’s been an expensive year for us and this has been a great help.”
