KOBI Spirit of Community Moment: Cottage Grove Community Foundation

KOBI: Oregon Community Foundation helps communities all across the state. OCF is a primary funder of The Cottage Grove Community Foundation. Not only does this foundation help meet basic community needs, it works with the local school district to offer opportunities to its students. Here's another Spirit of Community Moment.

KOBI: Since the Cottage Grove Community Foundation was created it is awarded more than $800,000 to help fund student scholarships and extracurricular programs in the local school district.

Gary Ackley: We give grants to the school district for projects that are outside their budget.

KOBI: Gary Ackley is the Gift and Endowment Chairperson. He has seen the scholarship funds grow dramatically.

GA: The first award was eight scholarships for $6,100. This year there was 109 scholarships and total just over $166,000.

Brian McCasline: And that's just fabulous. It's an amazing benefit to our students. It also provides a connection to the community.

KOBI: The foundation also funds local sports programs through The Heather Cunningham Bridgens Endowment.

BM: Heather's passion was extracurricular activities, particularly sports.

KOBI: Brian McCasline is the Assistant Superintendent of the South Lane School District and an advisor with The Cottage Grove Community Foundation. He says the Heather fund has an important mission.

BM: To cover the costs of athletics and other extracurricular activities for our students, which is just tremendous. There are so many students that have a hard time paying the participation fees.

KOBI: If you’d like to help make Southern Oregon a better place to live, visit Oregon Community Foundation at oregoncf.org.

This from KOBI TV's "Oregon Community Foundation: Spirit of Community" series.