Northern Lights - Issue 21 - June 2023
ANTRIM, ANTRIM SHINING BRIGHT!
by AMY LANE
Louise Wenzel, Chair of The Antrim Foundation
Next month, a new light will shine on professional artists throughout Antrim County.
It’s the Antrim Art Trail – a promotion launching in July thanks to a $2,000 grant from The Antrim Foundation, a growing organization looking to support and strengthen the entirety of the northern Michigan county, through philanthropy, collaboration and opportunities.
Connecting Needs with Resources
“There are so many needs within Antrim County, within each of the communities,” said Louise Wenzel, foundation board chair. “There’s a need to bring us all together, and leverage off each other.”
The idea for the art trail and its upcoming brochure came out of community listening sessions held in early 2022 as the foundation was evolving from the then-Bellaire Chamber Foundation to an entity looking to make an impact Antrim-wide – a unique role in a county with 23,000 residents spread throughout 602 square miles of lakes, trails, rivers, open spaces, farms and historic downtowns.
“Prior to our inception in 2022, there has been no foundation whose goal was to serve the needs of our entire county,” Wenzel said. “And the needs are vast: Support for youth mental health, economic development and growth, access to affordable housing and quality child care, protections for our natural environment, and opportunities for education and the arts.”
Roots of Collaboration
While the foundation’s name and charge are new, its background is one of past collaboration and success. That was particularly notable during the COVID-19 pandemic’s challenging grip, when in fall 2020 the Bellaire Chamber Foundation partnered with Venture North Funding and Development to fundraise for Venture North’s Regional Resiliency Program, a COVID relief effort providing grants to small businesses impacted by the pandemic.
The foundation promoted the program and helped organize a local team that reviewed grant applications and made recommendations that Venture North followed in awarding funds. And the foundation raised $24,000 from donors – more than half of a $47,000 grant pot that included $3,000 from the Grand Traverse Regional Community Foundation and $20,000 from Venture North. Venture North President Laura Galbraith said at the time that the Bellaire foundation’s work was crucial to making the Antrim grant round a reality, and in May 2021, awards were made to 13 Antrim County businesses.
Wenzel, then chair of the Bellaire foundation, said bringing together representatives of local communities to be part of the Regional Resiliency Program grant review team proved to be a positive and well-received collaboration. It was an experience that led the foundation board to expand the foundation’s footprint to all of Antrim County, rebranding the foundation and adopting a new name that supported the geographic inclusion and signified to potential donors the foundation’s growth beyond Bellaire.
The foundation took shape with the help of a $10,000 seed grant from Rotary Charities of Traverse City -- money for a consultant to help develop an action plan and an additional consultant to assist with rebranding and training for fundraising and grant writing, Wenzel said.
The year-old Antrim Foundation is looking at where it can make a mark. And one area is support for businesses, as seen in a new partnership with Venture North that has local connections at its core.
For The Antrim Foundation, the initiative with Venture North aligns with one of the foundation’s missions -- to foster economic growth and prosperity by working in partnership with public and private stakeholders – and it could help small businesses that are anchors in many Antrim communities.
It could also acquaint businesses with the “great opportunities” that Venture North can offer, said Ruben Meneses, vice chair of the foundation board and a businessperson himself, as co-owner of the Dockside restaurant and bar in Bellaire, on Torch Lake. “I don’t think a ton of small businesses know about Venture North and what they have to offer.”
Success Breeding Success – for Small Businesses
The plan: To gather local intelligence to identify, in economically distressed areas, businesses that are growing and in the investment focus of Venture North, particularly minority or low-income individuals who own businesses, or businesses located in low-income communities. To such businesses that hold the most promise for Venture North’s assistance, Venture North can then zero in on needs and assist through loans, mini grants and free consulting services – the suite of offerings Venture North provides throughout its 10-county region in northwest Michigan.
Venture North consultant Tim Ervin said Venture North would supply the foundation with baseline economic data indicating distressed areas of particularly high priority. “And what we would like The Antrim Foundation to do, is talk with communities through their networks and identify businesses that hold the most promise,” Ervin said. Venture North would pay the foundation for its work.
Ervin said in the Regional Resiliency Program, or RRP, Venture North counted on, respected and followed the insight of local people for grant funding decisions, and Venture North wants to “reinvigorate that local connection…which was extraordinary.”
Venture North’s Galbraith said local intelligence and knowledge during the RRP was “really valuable” and “the local partners strengthened our outreach.” Such partners understand how businesses receive information locally, know the business owners, employees and customers, and know “the impact the business makes in the community,” she said.
Galbraith added that Venture North “learned so much about the value of local intelligence” that it changed its staffing model after the RRP, strategically recruiting team members to have representation in communities throughout northern Michigan.
Ervin said Venture North wants to build on its RRP partnership experience by using local teams in Antrim and elsewhere to identify businesses “that likely meet Venture North’s targets…so we can follow up and deploy resources when everything fits…building and lifting communities up from whence those recommendations came.”
Help for Antrim County Businesses Most in Need
Venture North can offer loans to fit business plans and projections, mini grants to help businesses address issues or bridge gaps that are holding them back from growing, and consulting to help solve problems or take advantage of business opportunities. Venture North can even help tackle seasonality – a challenge to businesses across the region – by offering flexible terms like interest-only payments during off-season months, Galbraith said. “We can also work with clients on different strategies, such as exploring online sales.”
Galbraith said Venture North and its programs need to be more well-known in Antrim, and Venture North wants “to better-understand the needs of the businesses and how we may be able to help.”
Branching Out with a Plan
So too, does The Antrim Foundation. Since its inception last summer, the foundation has been moving forward to respond to several needs identified in its community listening sessions, including business support, broader access to arts and culture opportunities, more collaboration between communities, and support for youth mental health wellness.
Last fall, the foundation worked with Short’s Brewing Co. to extend a popular downtown Bellaire summer concert series beyond Labor Day weekend, with the foundation raising more than $7,000 to pay performers for weekly entertainment events, Wenzel said.
And in January, the foundation received a $2,500 grant from the Grand Traverse Regional Community Foundation, or GTRCF, for a project to increase access to mental health resources at a local high school, with hopes it can be a pilot for other schools. “Our youth have significant mental health needs coming out of the pandemic,” Wenzel said. “We want to make it easy for these kids to get support and feel a sense of belonging.”
The grant has helped fund hiring a licensed professional counselor to conduct individual or group counseling sessions at an Antrim County high school. The project is a partnership with Communities in Schools of Northwest Michigan, a Mancelona-based nonprofit that connects students and families to community resources, and We Fight, a northern Michigan youth mental health initiative, Wenzel said.
Connections for Philanthropy
GTRCF President and CEO Dave Mengebier said youth mental health is among issues shared by Antrim and the four other counties that the Grand Traverse foundation serves, and there could be other opportunities or challenges that the two organizations can co-fund, going forward.
“The issues that are facing businesses and residents and families in Antrim County are the same ones that we’re working on in Benzie, Kalkaska, Grand Traverse and Leelanau county. Housing, youth mental health, early childhood education, access to child care, infrastructure, environmental programs…I think there are plenty of opportunities to collaborate,” Mengebier said.
“I think collaboration is really vitally important in philanthropy as it is in business and it is in government. But it takes time and effort,” he said. “There’s so much need out there for resources, that we’re really not going to move the needle unless we partner with other organizations like The Antrim Foundation, so that’s something we really strive to do.”
Mengebier said “there’s no question that The Antrim Foundation can have a big impact” in the county and it appears to “be off to a strong start,” adding that Wenzel “has quite a skill set, expertise, in this area” that benefits the foundation.
He noted that The Antrim Foundation’s board, which currently numbers nine but can reach 11, includes “people that live and work and raise their families in Antrim County” who can “have their finger on the pulse” of needs and opportunities for impact.
“…we’re really not going to move the needle unless we partner with other organizations like The Antrim Foundation, so that’s something we really strive to do..”
— Dave Mengebier, Grand Traverse Regional Community Foundation
A Foundation for Antrim Artists
With the Antrim Art Trail, the foundation’s $2,000 grant is funding a brochure that will include a map and listings of professional artists, their contact information and location of their studio or where their art can be seen or is sold, said Cindi Place, director of the Bellaire Public Library and the art trail idea’s originator.
Place said at the library, visitors frequently ask about local artists or art, but there’s been no organized direction available. She raised the suggestion at a community listening session.
“Antrim County has a lot to offer when it comes to artists,” Place said, including oil and watercolor painters, jewelry artists, potters, stained-glass and pencil-drawing artisans. She said the brochure’s audience is community members as well as visitors and it has two aims: Building recognition of “how many professional artists we have in our area,” and building their sales.
As of mid-May, around 20 artists had applied to be listed. A committee will review applications and plans call for the brochure to be available in the first part of July, at various locations in the county.
Place said a second application period is planned for the fall, and if all goes well, “the dream is in a couple years” that the art trail might even spur a broader promotion in which other businesses join in recognizing the trail for a day.
She said the foundation’s involvement and monetary support has lent legitimacy to the idea. And the project highlights “that they really want to represent Antrim County as a foundation.”
Progress: Hard Work, Small Steps Adding Up
Wenzel said the foundation is continuing to reach out to community stakeholders and organizations to introduce itself and build its visibility, and to network, fundraise and form relationships. That’s included a “meet and greet” that drew some 40 community stakeholders from throughout Antrim County – an event where Galbraith said she experienced first-hand the foundation’s passion for the county, with a board “really energized and eager to learn and help.”
Said Wenzel: “We have no staff, we are a completely working board. We’re all committed to ensure this foundation remains strong and continues, because of this need for an umbrella across Antrim County.
“We’re in the infancy stage of this foundation. And it’s a process,” she said. “Through these small successes, we can communicate out” to communities, so they in turn will see: “You’re trying to bring us all together.”
Amy Lane is a veteran Michigan business reporter whose background includes work with Crain Communications Inc., Crain’s Detroit Business and serving as Capitol correspondent for nearly 25 years. Now a freelance reporter and journalist, Lane’s work has appeared in many publications including Traverse City Business News.
