Staff writer
The Peabody community foundation is eligible to receive a matching grant from the Kansas Health Foundation.
A matching grant is a grant where the recipient must raise money to receive money. Peabody will have to raise $180,000 over six years to see any of their grant of equal value.
The grant will be rationed over six years — Peabody will have to raise $30,000 to receive $30,000 of the grant. Both community foundations will only receive as much money from the grant as they can raise, but they both have to raise at least 10 percent of the total grant every year — $18,000 for Peabody — to remain eligible.
If Peabody exceeds $30,000 in a year, they still only receive $30,000 but the excess money counts toward the next year.
“It gives us some incentive to do it,” Peabody community foundation board member N.M. Patton said. “We’ve already raised our money for 2010.”
Patton said that doubling part of the foundation’s earnings every year will help cover a lot of the extra costs that the foundation incurs. The Peabody community foundation’s source of income is funds that people set up to support organizations like Main Street Ministries, Big Brothers Big Sisters of Marion County or the Peabody Historical Society. While the money that people put into funds must go to those specific organizations, the money from the Kansas Health Foundation may cover administrative costs.
Patton said that the parameters of the grant will not be presented to the board members in Peabody until early 2010 and that the board will not decide on a plan of action until then. Patton does know that a percentage of the grant will have to go to health-related projects.
However, he believes that health can be a loosely applicable term. Patton said that reading programs at the library, which had previously received funds from the Peabody Community Foundation, could be considered as helping the mental health of the community.
“That goes toward health of the community in a broad sense,” he said.
Patton is excited at the possibilities the grant could provide.
“It’s a way we have to build and work in the community,” he said.