HUTCHINSON, Kan. — Dick Dillon had a vision: a perpetual fund to help the city where it needs it most. Now, 30 years later, the Hutchinson Community Foundation is doing that and more.
The foundation is celebrating its 30th year of operation. In those years, countless organizations — big and small — have benefited. From large grants that provide services to those in need, to small endowments that are left behind by loved ones targeting what is near to their heart. Local attorney Brad Dillon recalls his father’s idea to build a foundation. “My dad took the lead on this,” Dillon said. “He read about the idea of a community foundation in other towns so he started looking into that. (He) actually traveled to several towns to learn how they had done it and how it worked.”
The foundation started small, but then started to pick up momentum as local business leaders recognized the need for its service to the community. “What he learned from those visits is you start small and you start with a group of people that are well known and respected. So that, right off the bat, anyone asking who’s participating, they probably knew of that person.” Dillon said.
The foundation is headed up by President and CEO Aubrey Abbott Patterson, who has been with HCF for 15 years. After a lot of work, the foundation started with $400,000. According to Patterson, that was used to basically fund the foundation. “That $400,000 in the beginning was used to pay bills and the grant-making that we did out of the community foundation,” Patterson said. “And now, today, 30 years later, depending on the moment, it’s around $72 million.”
Patterson says more important than the current endowment is the money already given to help the city and its residents. “More important what it’s grown to and what we hold in assets is what we’ve given away,” Patterson said. “And that was Dick Dillon and the other founders’ real vision. But we’ve given away something like $76 million.”
The gifts have been big and small over the years, from large organizations and causes to small memorials for loved ones. “It’s really fun to help people touch the lives of others through philanthropy,” Patterson said. “We receive a lot of gifts that are memorials in honor or memory of someone that was important to them and it’s fun to help families figure out how to use that money in a meaningful way that truly honors their loved ones.”
One of those funds was started by Debbie Hindman, now Debbie Zook. When her husband David was killed in a home accident, it was the foundation that provided an avenue to help others. “I originally decided to do the fund because, in talking with Skip Johnson, we knew there would be memorials coming in and we were trying to figure out what to do,” Zook said. “In the end, the memorial fund provided an avenue for youth to take swim lessons and provided cameras for the Boys and Girls Club, among other things. “It was nice to be able to know that I could help second graders do swimming lessons and the Boys and Girls Club I did the cameras for,” Zook said.
Not only has the foundation provided small memorials like Zook’s, it has provided the avenues to help entire neighborhoods. Jennifer O’Conner grew up in Farmington Park. Her parents and grandparents were instrumental in developing the area that was bounded by ALCO and the drive-in theater. The area was developed by Stiles Contracting and the Stiles family was well known for their homes, many of which were built in the neighborhood. The friendship of the Stiles and Dillon families led O’Conner and her siblings to help add to the foundation. “They wanted to be a part of that because my dad had grown up with them and wanted to make sure that what they had done to grow the community as far as building houses would carry on,” O’Conner said. The fund left to the foundation has gone to make several improvements in the Farmington neighborhood, especially at the park. “We felt it was most appropriate to grant money toward the neighborhood that mom and dad and grandma and grandpa had a hand in building,” O’Conner said.
Until the foundation came to be, there were times agencies struggled to find the funds needed to provide services. One of the important ones in the area is the Cancer Council of Reno County. Until 2010, fundraising was about survival for the Cancer Council of Reno County. Solely focused on meeting the annual needs of patients fighting cancer, the council’s leadership thought putting money away in an endowed fund seemed out of the question. With inspiration from donors, board members and Hutchinson Community Foundation, the Cancer Council began making a conscious effort to create a fund with hopes of a more-sustainable future.
“We had to expand our thinking from helping cancer patients today, to helping cancer patients forever,” Sandy Woodson, executive director of CCRC, said.
Endowed funds serve as an organization’s long-term savings account, where the principal remains untouched and the organization only spends the interest in perpetuity. CCRC works to build the fund through its annual Round-Up fundraiser, the Community Foundation’s Match Day events and through special gifts. The board even committed $10,000 from operating funds to the endowment in honor of CCRC’s first director, Mary Hall.
As the foundation continues to help others, it is also looking to its future to remain an engine for philanthropy and giving. Patterson has a very positive outlook for the foundation. “I think it’s just going to keep on getting better at this,” Patterson said. “We’re going to keep thinking about what our community needs and how we can have more impact.” One of those areas the foundation plans to look further into is direct support of various needs in the city and county. “On the horizon for us is figuring out how to put more of our assets to work in Reno County,” Patterson said. “So we’ve been making grants every year, but as we try to get better at this and have more impact, we’re going to start making some investments.”
Patterson says that means taking money from what might be invested in the stock market to generate funds and investing it directly into the community. One area that has benefited from direct help of the foundation is New Beginnings, who benefited from the foundation building the Santa Fe Place apartment complex on West 5th Avenue. “We brought our capital into this project in the community and, in return, we got 12 units of workforce housing that looks cool, cleaned up two blocks of blight, created a pocket community that’s walkable to downtown,” Patterson noted. “I’m really proud we could use our money to make something good happen and I think we’re going to learn how to do more of that probably in our downtown and investing in entrepreneurs and businesses and our old buildings that need renovation and rehab.”
The foundation is also looking to keep money that is currently in the city here in the future by asking residents to leave something behind for the foundation. “We’ve started asking everyone around us if they would consider leaving five percent of their estate back to this community that helped raise their kids, built their business, helped them do the things they did in their life to give back,” Patterson said. “We have a growing list of names of people and families who have said, ‘yeah, we want to give back to this place we love and we want it to be great for the next generation.'”
The foundation has done so much for the area, regularly giving out between $3 million and $5 million in grants each year in big and small projects and causes. Everyone has made a difference in Hutchinson and Reno County, whether it be entire organizations or something as simple as swim lessons for children.