The Community Foundation For a Better Bigfork met for their February meeting to discuss and approve their annual budget.

Andrea Sliter Goudge with the Financial Committee presented their 2022 budget and went over their annual review. She began with a summary of their portfolio review from a recent meeting with herself, Diane Kautzman and the board’s financial advisor from D.A. Davidson. She said overall their investment returns were in really good shape, and they will continue to stay the course for now. She said the board's reserves totals are estimated to be around $150,000. Goudge explained why these investments were originally setup by the CFBB.

"We wanted to make sure given our conservative history that we had an adequate reserve. So at that time, the board approved an 18 month estimate of our expenses. So at that time our expenses annually were about $90,000-$100,000. So, we have kept a very liquid--- even though our investments are highly liquid, they are subject to market volatility, we have a good amount that's available to us at any point in time," Goudge said.

For their annual budget, Goudge said the group saw $165,000 in revenue for 2021. She said last year was great in terms of fundraising— particularly a $29,000 donation from the Bigfork Community Foundation Trust, also called ‘the Box Foundation.’ The committee budgeted $186,000 in revenue this year after looking at potential grants and income sources for 2022. For expenses, last year the CFBB spent $100,000. They are budgeting to spend $175,000 in 2022.

The group is planning to increase fundraising expenses— part of which goes towards the cost of their annual dinner, which has been budgeted for $8,000. During the same meeting, board members discussed the upcoming fundraiser and said they want to adjust how the annual dinner is set-up and how much it costs to attend— looking to make it more accessible for younger community members. The budgeted amount may change depending on the final cost of the fundraiser, which plans will be solidified for in upcoming meetings.

They also budgeted $8,000 for maintenance costs, like street striping and trail maintenance. They budgeted $29,000 for administrative costs, which relates to a grant for $29,000 that the group is hoping to get when they hire their new executive director.

The Bigfork Area Chamber of Commerce is partnering with networking nonprofit Encore to bring in Rebecca Drummond. She will train under Executive Director Rebekah King and then use her one year fellowship to help create an executive director’s position for the CFBB. Drummond’s background is in the tech industry, but she hopes to use this fellowship to transition to nonprofit work in her retirement. Her goal is to establish a monthly newsletter from the CFBB and a membership renewal database, among other duties.

Goudge said this year they had their accounting fees waived by Jordahl and Sliter, but they don’t necessarily expect that to happen every year, so they budgeted $4,000 for accounting fees. The group also budgeted $1,500 for print advertising and about $3,500 revamping the CFBB website. They set aside funds for repairs and maintenance at the BACC, which could be partially paid for through a grant.

Goudge said they are still expecting direction from the Bigfork Community Foundation Trust and budgeted to spend $29,000— the same amount they were given by the organization in 2021. She said the Grand Dr. public parking lot is no longer under their care this year— a change that offsets $13,000 of expenses in this year’s budget.

The group budgeted their annual $10,000 donation for the purchase of a new library building for the ImagineIF Bigfork branch, which currently resides inside the BACC building. The board agreed to hold off on making the donation after recent controversy with the ImagineIF board and shake ups in library leadership.

Interim Library Director Martha Furman resigned in December, citing growing tensions between some library board members and library staff over what she sees as board overreach in how the library is operated. In February, ImagineIF Library Foundation Director Charlotte Housel resigned as well. She told the Daily Inter Lake that she took the job because of the exemplary job the library was doing at the time, but “now the library is struggling to maintain any level of service.” She said the library budget has been stagnant and because of a lack of staffing, and that they haven’t been able to use all of the grant funds provided by the foundation for programming. Under Housel’s leadership, the foundation started the capital campaign in Bigfork and has raised about half of their $1.6 million goal.

At the most recent ImagineIF Library Board meeting, trustees discussed a recent letter issued by the Flathead County Commissioners to the library board regarding property proposed to become the future home of the Bigfork library. In the letter, the commissioners say they will not commit to assuming any property responsibility for the library system at this time. Trustee Doug Adams said this was a miscommunication, claiming commissioners want more information about the property before making a decision, and that a recent draft transfer agreement sent to the commissioners lacked an inspection document and estimate for future building maintenance costs which was requested. The board said a future discussion with trustees, the commissioners and representatives from the ImagineIF Foundation Board are expected and that they remain committed to the property transfer. The ImagineIF Library Foundation has already purchased the Bethany Lutheran Church Ark Building, the site the foundation plans to become the Bigfork library, with the intention that ownership of the building would be turned over to the county.

“The recommendation would be, let’s just hold off and see if the controversy settles down a little bit and that they’re going to move forward with their plans,” Goudge said.

A motion was made to accept the budget by Karin Henion and was seconded by Andrea Goff. The board voted unanimously to approve their 2022 budget. Variants of the budget will be approved as funds and needs change throughout the year.

The board also agreed to focus on board and committee organization throughout the year. This is part of a larger goal for the board which is to better figure out procedures and committee goals before hiring a new executive director towards the end of the year or early 2023. Goff described it as “a changing of the guard,” as the board hopes to include younger community members as the group moves forward. So far, there are seven applicants for the two vacant positions.

The CFBB board will come together for their next meeting on March 17 at the Community Methodist Church starting at 12 p.m.

CORRECTION: The sentence "Goudge said these investments were previously set-up by the board as a sort of rainy day fund," was incorrectly attributed to Goudge. Board Member Andrea Goff asked, "So, it's like a rainy day fund?" during the board's discussion about investment funds. The article has been updated with a quote from Goudge that more accurately conveys why the board setup stock investments. The sentence "The board has $150,000 in investment funds," has also been updated to "She said the board's reserves totals are estimated to be around $150,000."