orner of the banquet room, “3” and “0” balloons marked the anniversary of the Keweenaw Community Foundation, while speakers conveyed how far the organization has come from its beginnings.

The KCF held its annual Keweenaw Gold dinner at the Bonfire in Houghton Thursday night.

Executive Director Robin Meneguzzo paid tribute to the more than 200 people who have served as board members, staff members, or Youth Advisory Council members since its inception.

Earlier this year, the KCF became certified as an accredited community foundation through a national process, which certifies that the foundation is following best practices.

“That’s another great milestone for us,” Meneguzzo said Executive Director Robin Meneguzzo.

It’s also in a new location, having moved from its office on Quincy Street in Hancock further down the road to the former Hirvonen Hall building, which has become a “vibrant community hub,” Meneguzzo said.

Meneguzzo boiled the foundation’s work into three main areas: community giving, in which the foundation works with donors to learn how they can give back to the community; community impact, in which the foundation works to accumulate unrestricted funds that can be used for flexible response to urgent community needs; and community collaboration.

“This is really the work that we do when we’re partnering, sitting down at the table with our partners around the community, rolling up our sleeves and saying ‘How can we help? What can we help (do) to solve the problems that we’re facing together?’,” she said.

The KCF now has $12.4 million under management, Meneguzzo said — a bit of a step up from the $27 in a checking account 30 years ago.

That money is spread across 111 funds, 84 of which were started by local people. Each year, some goes out to more than 60 nonprofits — more than $400,000 so far in 2024, which hasn’t even gotten to the biggest granting cycle of the year yet, Meneguzzo said.

That’s been matched by the almost $400,000 that’s cme in through donations.

Six of those funds are new. One honors the late Rev. Robert Langseth, whose family wanted to honor the Main Street Project.

“Actually, Reverend Langseth was also one of the founders of the foundation,” Meneguzzo said. “He was an advocate, a large advocate, so we’re really grateful for his family support.”

Meneguzzo used Thursday’s gala for a public announcement. The KCF just launched a partnership with the U.S. Endowment for Forestry and Communities, which chose the Keweenaw as one of two sites nationwide for a pilot project to support forest-reliant communities.

“This is going to be a large project spanning five years, and there’s going to be five years of investment — not just by the endowment, by other partners — and this investment is going to be shaped by the local community,” she said. “…This was a really great opportunity for us, and we’re excited to see where it takes us.”

Through a grantee survey last year, the KCF identified a need for educational networking opportunities for area nonprofits. In response, it is launching a quarterly series in a partnership with another nonprofit that serves the Keweenaw.

The KCF also works closely with the Heartlands Project, working closely with the Nature Conservancy and the stakeholder committee. In a new partnership with TNC and the Keweenaw County Sheriff’s Office, the KCF secured grant funding to begin planning a future emergency operations center in the county.

Child care has been identified as one of the biggest needs in the area. In an effort to address that, the KCF has also worked closely with the Keweenaw Family Resource Center and the Great Start Collaborative and Keweenaw Economic Development Alliance.

“I’m very hopeful that there are going to b e some opening slots in the new year between in-home centers and child care centers,” Meneguzzo said. “That’s a huge win for the community, because we really need to do better in that space.”

To grow the next generation of volunteers, KCF has also partnered with Michigan Technological University to build relationships with nonprofits in order to give students volunteer opportunities.

Meneguzzo sees the foundation’s next steps as going to a thriving community that takes care of its resources, that loves the people, that loves the place, that takes care of its resources, that takes care of each other.”

“It’s very easy to be doom and gloom right now, no matter how we feel about things, but I think that there’s a lot of hope, and there’s a big, bright future for us here,” she said. “I think that the more we keep working together and have that shared vision of where we’re going, we’re going to be able to do it more strongly together.”