COEUR d’ALENE — The founders of Gizmo-CDA received a welcome surprise Tuesday.

Barbara Pleason-Mueller and her husband, Marty Mueller, were visited at their Fourth Street “makerspace” by representatives of Spokane Teachers Credit Union, including retiring STCU President/CEO Tom Johnson and Ezra Eckhardt who will take over as the credit union’s President/CEO after the end of the year.

Girls were busy working on coding projects in Gizmo’s midtown workspace, but they didn’t mind the interruption to witness the STCU leaders present Gizmo-CDA with a $25,000 donation, which left Pleason-Mueller gasping for words. “I’m speechless. Thank you so much,” she said, when able to speak.

Pleason-Mueller and Mueller then gave a tour of the small and cluttered space that shows signs of learning and creating in every nook and cranny.

“Can I just carry this around with me the whole time?” Pleason-Mueller jokingly asked while clutching the oversized check.

Gizmo-CDA provides an innovative learning environment equipped with creative technology and diverse tools and equipment.

While STCU makes donations to different groups all year long, this was the first year the credit union participated in “Giving Tuesday,” recognized for the past six years as the Tuesday after Thanksgiving. STCU visited six different locations Tuesday to present donations in Spokane, Newport, Sandpoint and Coeur d’Alene.

“Generally speaking, we try to focus on children and youth programs, education, and community needs,” Eckhardt said.

STCU’s commitment to community involvement and giving back creates value for the credit union’s members, he said.

“We operate out of the philosophy that engaged employees work well in an environment where they like to come to work, they understand what their goals and objectives are, they love the people that they work with left and right, and they pass that on to our members...Engaged members engage the community, and for us, community involvement is absolutely imperative,” Eckhardt said.

The money will help Gizmo-CDA with its upcoming move from its Fourth Street storefront into the Hedlund building on the North Idaho College campus, and the nonprofit makerspace is excited to be working with both NIC and the University of Idaho directly.

“It will create a chance to send teachers who are learning to be teachers to Gizmo, to take part in the activities, to learn how to do project-driven education, and to be part of the system, so then they go into their classroom when they begin teaching, and they’re not afraid of everything that is out there for them to use,” Pleason-Mueller said.

Another upcoming project that the money will greatly help with is the “Johnny Arm” project. John Matheny, who lost an arm to cancer in 2008, was in Coeur d’Alene this past summer for the Think Big Festival, and debuted a bionic arm that he has been working on developing with Johns Hopkins University, but the arm is not his.

“He doesn’t own the arm. He goes home at night without that, but he is working with it all day, and then he leaves it there. It has become kind of a passion for a lot of us,” Pleason-Mueller said.