It is a busy time of year for the Highland Community Foundation, as we move forward with several projects during the second half of 2017.
We are in the middle of preparations for our annual Oktoberfest fundraiser, held this year on Thursday, October 5th, from 6pm-9pm at the Lincoln Center Banquet Hall. This is the Foundation's annual fundraiser, featuring German food, craft beer and wine, raffle and silent auction prizes, and music by Die Musikmeisters German Band. Tickets are $75 each and can be purchased from HCF Board members, or going online to 2017 Highland Community Foundation Oktoberfest at eventbrite.com. If anyone is interested in being a sponsor, donating a silent auction or raffle prize, or wants more information about the event, they can email the Foundation at highlandcf@gmail.com.
Currently, the Foundation is raising funds to support the arts and help replace diseased and dying trees in Highland. HCF recently initiated a "Highland Has Art" program, which looks to organize and support through funding, partnering with grants, and publicity, the arts in the broadest sense of the term. As part of this effort, the Foundation is taking the lead this Fall in creating a Highland Arts Council, which hopes to organize the community's art organizations, adult and student, under one entity in order to highlight their activities and eventually seek to provide financial assistance, through a grant process, to assist these groups.
Our second fundraising priority is to assist in replacing diseased and dying trees in Highland's parks and public spaces. HCF was a partner in the grant which has been used to conduct a town-wide tree inventory this year, and looks forward to the report due out in the coming weeks, outlining an action plan for the Town to move this project forward. Public input on the town’s proposed Urban Forest Management Plan, will take place at a meeting of the Highland Park Board on September 21st and at a meeting of the Highland Town Council on September 25th. Thirty trees have been obtained and planted already, through another grant which HCF partnered with other town and civic groups, such as the Rotary Club.
As another ongoing fundraising project, HCF has partnered with Highland coffee roaster Smalltown Coffee Co., to create a special roast of coffee, just for the Town of Highland. Smalltown intends to donate a share of the proceeds from the sale of “Highland’s Coffee” to the foundation to assist its fundraising projects. Public input has been obtained through two recent taste tests at the Midweek Market at Main Square, and a Highland artist will be chosen to provide the artwork for the coffee packaging. Sales of the coffee will debut at the October 14th Highland Festival of the Trail.
The Highland Community Foundation is a 501 (C) (3) nonprofit organization, which was formed in 2010, and began as an organization in 2011. The Foundation’s first project was a cooperative effort to convert a vacant lot along a BP pipeline, at a historically dangerous intersection of 45th and 5th Streets, into a small park featuring the Ashley Ritz Memorial Sculpture. The Foundation has also partnered with governmental and other nonprofit agencies to fund improvements to the Highland Rookery, as well as help to obtain grants to bring an outdoor public mural and a sculpture to downtown Highland.
Foundation Board Members for 2017 include Lance Ryskamp, Cheryl Nicksic, Dave Wilkinson, Bridget DeYoung, Jim Dal Santo, Judy Vaughn, Michelle Anderson, Abe Rivera, and Robert Plantz
In addition to the Oktoberfest fundraiser, interested parties can support the Highland Community Foundation by mailing a donation to P.O. Box 1783, Highland, IN 46322, making a donation online at the foundation's website at www.highlandcommunityfoundation.org or supporting the Highland Community Foundation through the use of Amazon Smile.