Diana R. Sieger is the president of the Grand Rapids Commmunity Foundation. For more information, visit Diana's President's pages or view her biography.

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President's Point of View: Putting a grant on a fast track!

December 16, 2007

Sometimes the work that the staff does goes unnoticed because it is “part of our job” after all. Well I am going to proudly say our Program staff did a superior job recently on a grant along with our great volunteers on our Resource Committee and Board of Trustees!

The foreclosure rate throughout Michigan is literally going through the roof and we are not immune here in West Michigan and Kent County in particular with more than 3,000 families a year losing their homes! Laurie Craft, Program Director, leads our efforts in the areas of community and economic development and in a recent meeting noted that Home Repair Services completed a pre-application requesting funds to add a counselor for their Foreclosure Intervention Program. This program, by the way, is Michigan’s largest non-profit program focusing on this critical problem.

If we had waited for a more complete proposal, the grant would not have been approved until our February board meeting - with a lag time of close to two months not to mention the time to find the right person for the job, it could have been early spring before more families would be served!

Because we had funded this effort in the past, we knew the intricacies of the program and just needed some additional information that the agency supplied quickly. Laurie and the program team only had three business days to prepare the request to be approved at our board meeting held last Monday, December 14th. All the necessary paperwork and due diligence was prepared, the Resource Committee met by conference call and by Monday, the request was presented to the board and enthusiastically approved and now HRS will have five counselors who will make a good positive impact on the foreclosure problem!

While the problem is extremely serious, I am so very pleased that we were able to recognize that this program needed attention immediately! Kudos to our staff, Resource Committee and Board of Trustees!

We also know that we have a serious problem that will require long-term attention so we will be convening key parties in our community to work on this issue. Can we prevent it in the future? Perhaps, but right now we are responding to the situation and hopefully through effective collaboration we all can create a sustainable response serving all homeowners in our community.