Greater Glendive Community Foundation started in 2007 after Glendive went through a Horizon Leadership Program for civic action by the Pew Foundation. The all volunteer board fundraised so has over $200,000 in the endowment and has granted out for art gallery roof and lighting, shaded roof for Legion baseball bleachers, splash park, skate park, community concert artists school programs, college student mentors with middle school, playground equipment, recycling, statue trail, T-Rex dinosaur statue and more.
In 2015 we were getting repeat requests yet no one was addressing the downtown deterioration. We ran a contest to choose 5 photos of outdoor activities in Dawson County. Winning photos were made into 4’ x 6’ vinyl banners in the boarded up windows of the old chamber building, formerly the NP ticket office, by the downtown traffic light. The building looked shabby so we got paint with help from a Thrivent grant, a local donor and teachers as well as our board volunteered o paint. Then the roof needed help so the local lumberyard donated discontinued shingles. Only if you are looking from the train side will you notice the back side is a different color. The weedy lot next door got our attention with a fence, rock and gravel donated by Fisher Sand and Gravel.
GGCF sponsored the MSU School of Architecture Community Design Class to create a vision for downtown Glendive fall semester 2016. They interviewed community leaders and people at the football game and farmers market and came back with reports given to our community. We served a soup lunch thanks to a Thrivent grant and had over 50 attendees.
What was going to happen with it- Main Street MT encouraged us to write a downtown master plan grant which working with the city and a grant writer Kathy McLane from MidRivers who does that for communities in MidRivers Territory, we wrote it and got a the $34,000 we needed for the study. GGCF contributed $1500. City Council adopted the Downtown Master Plan Dec. of 2017. It is a roadmap for future project.
GGCF took on the underpass as our project in improving downtown – a bigger project that we thought. The underpass looks awesome, mostly thanks to the wow factor provided by Charity Schreibeis and her dad Dean Mindt that painted murals on the underpass in 2020. We have worked with Charity’s art students to add murals to downtown 2nd story boarded up windows and all over town. We look at ways to improve downtown as well as grant out funds to local projects annually, thanks to the generosity of our donors.
In 2016 one of our board members, Ty Milne passed away from cancer and Bridger Bronze offered to make a bronze statue reflecting his interests. It turnout out to be “Born to Hunt” a boy with his dog, with Ty’s actual tennis shoes, jacket and his dog’s collar cast in bronze. Funds were raised in six months. Fisher Sand and Gravel has been instrumental in installing every one of the 14 statues Pamela Harr of Bridger Bronze has since donated to the city of Glendive with the support of many donors. Greater Glendive has granted funds to a number of her projects since raising $35,000 for Born to Hunt in 2017.
This all volunteer board is a working board with visions to make Glendive even better. In 2022 we fundraised on Give Local Day for downtown hanging flower baskets with the brackets made locally by Mindt Machine. Downtown Glendive was bright with 8 blocks of flowers the first year and in 2023, 12 blocks of pink bubblegum supertunias caught everyone’s attention. It has been a collaboration with the Bloom to grow the flowers in their greenhouse, with the city to hang the flowers, Tractor Supply donating the soil and Angie Hagen at Edward Jones donating the water. The fairgrounds loaned their 4-wheeler for the first 3 years but then HKT donated their retired S10 delivery pickup in 2024. We put our watering tank and wand in the pickup box and now volunteers can water every other morning in comfort. Each year Give Local funds go to pay for the flowers downtown so our endowment money can continue to grow for local grants.
We are proud to coordinate Give Local Glendive Day on the first Thursday of May annually. Our giving day is in person with 20+ nonprofits participating annually. We have raised $15,000-$20,000 annually. People can also give online during the First Thursday and Friday in May through the Billings Community Foundations’ www.YellowstoneGives.org website as Greater Glendive Community Foundation always is involved.
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