The Whitefish Community Foundation presented the first Linda Engh-Grady Award for Nonprofit Excellence to Heidi Van Everen, the executive director of Whitefish Legacy Partners.

The award was created by the Whitefish Community Foundation’s board of directors along with some generous donors as a permanent endowment fund to celebrate the career of longtime Whitefish Community Foundation president and CEO, Linda Engh-Grady, who retired last year.

“Her leadership, hard work and determination allowed both the organization and its impact to flourish,” said Alan Davis, current president and CEO of Whitefish Community Foundation. “This $10,000 award honors a local nonprofit executive director who has similarly transformed an organization over their tenure and brought significant change to the Flathead Valley.”

For the last 13 years, Van Everen has been at the helm of Whitefish Legacy Partners, a nonprofit that works on conservation, recreation and education projects on the lands around Whitefish.

“Van Everen's career, from the beginning of Whitefish Legacy Partners, has forever changed the landscape of our community for the better,” said Engh-Grady. “Her work is a lasting legacy to Whitefish and the Flathead Valley, protecting watershed, recreation, open space and wildlife corridors. It is an honor to recognize Van Everen and her dedication to conservation."

Engh-Grady and Davis, along with board members from both groups, surprised Van Everen with the award, fittingly, at a local trailhead.

“It was a nice surprise,” Van Everen said. “I’m thankful [to be] recognized … as a person who has transformed an organization but I also feel like that is not something one person does. It is something that is community-driven and community-supported.”

When Van Everen started working at Whitefish Legacy Partners, Engh-Grady stepped into her role at the Whitefish Community Foundation. Van Everen said Engh-Grady mentored her then and that support continued over the years.

“I love that Linda and all the work that she has done is being honored by the Community Foundation by having this endowment that’s going to be an award that’s given year after year,” Van Everen said. “And I feel pretty special and thankful that I get to be the first honoree.” 

ORIGINALLY from Buffalo, New York, Van Everen moved with her family from Colorado to Whitefish in 2007. 

“We lived at 9,200 feet, in the mountains outside of Boulder in Colorado. It’s hard living at 9,000 feet, so every vacation we would always wonder if the place we were visiting could be our next home,” Van Everen said. “We came and stayed at Tally Lake and visited here and decided we wanted to move here.”

While researching the area, she learned the Whitefish community was concerned about development and interested in conservation. She also learned there was an idea to create a trail system around Whitefish Lake.

Shortly after the move, she began working at Whitefish Legacy Partners as a program director, bringing trail building experience she’d gained in college in New Hampshire. She had also worked in computer mapping and as part of the science department at the Nature Conservancy.

Within a few years, she stepped into the organization’s executive director position.

“It was the perfect combination of trails and conservation and nonprofit,” Van Everen said. “But I had never been part of the administrative side of the nonprofit. That was new for me.”

In addition to Engh-Grady, she said there were others in the nonprofit arena at the time that provided her with assistance in her new role, including Lin Akey, Fred Jones, Leslie Hunt, Diane Coradi, Mike Jopek, John Collins, Hank Ricklefs and John Muhlfeld.

“Linda was a great mentor for me from the beginning, as well as the board at the Community Foundation and the board of Legacy Partners,” Van Everen said. “It was inspiring for me, personally, to get to interact with these forward thinkers and innovative people and have them give me guidance and leadership.”

She said the people in the small community of Whitefish may have different politics and beliefs but they have made it clear that conservation and outdoor recreation are a priority.

“I’m proud to get to be a leader of Whitefish Legacy Partners because I do feel like the community values both the Whitefish Trail and our commitment to open spaces and community conservation,” she said. “It's so inspiring to be a part of a community that really chooses to prioritize that.”

Van Everen added that as a government agency and a partner of Whitefish Legacy Partners,  the City of Whitefish has made choices that have allowed community members to take the upper hand to ensure protection of scenic viewsheds and clean water. 

“The work we’re doing was a community vision to have open lands and have a trail,” she said. “It is inspiring, as a nonprofit leader as well as a community member, that people make choices to support community conservation and recreation.”

Davis said the Whitefish Trail and surrounding conservation lands are part of the community’s identity.

“Heidi’s unrelenting effort to arrange the public/private partnerships, develop very complicated agreements and cultivate broad community support more than deserves recognition,” Davis said. “On behalf of the entire community, we are so thankful for her dedication and commitment to conservation, education and recreation.”