St. Cloud, Minn. – The Women’s Fund of the Central Minnesota Community Foundation held their annual event on Monday June 19th on the campus of the College of St. Benedict. For the second year in a row the theme was “Dancing with our Stars”. Six local “celebrities” choose a charity that benefits women and girls, are paired with a professional dance partner to learn a dance and raise dollars for their charity. This year $40,000 was raised for the participating organizations plus an additional $39,000 will be granted to the organizations from the Women’s Fund for a total of $79,000 to help women and girls in our community. The results from this year’s competition are below:
1st Place- Dr. Joel Baumgartner and Meg Christine for Place of Hope
2nd Place – Melinda Vonderahe and Steve Streng for Services for Youth Homelessness (Catholic Charities)
3rd Place – Kelly Sayre and Dan Triplett for Girl Scouts of MN and WI Lakes and Pines
Other dance participants were Dr. Michael Contardo and partner Lisa Saari dancing for Terebinth Refuge, Dr. Leslie Green and partner Nancy Streng dancing for Domus Transitional Housing (Catholic Charities) and Jodi Gertken and partner Gustavo Pena dancing for Journey Home.
The winner is determined 40% by their dance score at the competition and 60% on how much money they have raised for their charity.The first place organization will receive $15,000 from the Women’s Fund, second place is $10,000 and third place is $5,000. The rest of the participants will be granted $2,000. For the first time this year there was also a judge’s choice award of $3,000 which was based solely on the judge’s scores of their dance performance and it was awarded to Kelly Sayre for Girl Scouts of MN and WI Lakes and Pines.
Since 2002, the Women’s Fund of the Central Minnesota Community Foundation has been dedicated to strengthening the community by improving the lives of women and girls. The Women’s Fund has granted over $1.2 million to support local programs in three core focus areas: girls age 10-18, women in transition and elder women.
The Central Minnesota Community Foundation (CMCF), in affiliation with CommunityGiving, is a public charity that attracts and administers charitable funds for the benefit of the local community. Since 1985, CMCF has grown to over $86.1 million in assets and awarded over $87.1 million in grants to local non-profits. CommunityGiving is a collaboration of community foundations united under a single framework to create efficiencies that maximize the impact of our donors. The core foundations working with CommunityGiving include the Alexandria Area Community Foundation, the Brainerd Lakes Area Community Foundation, the Central Minnesota Community Foundation and the Willmar Area Community Foundation. Collectively, CommunityGiving administers more than 650 funds totaling more than $123 million. Learn more at CommunityGiving.org/CentralMN
