Reliable, Trustworthy Reporting, Capturing The Heartbeat Of Our Community
Reliable, Trustworthy Reporting, Capturing The Heartbeat Of Our Community
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A community, just like a person, is an unfolding process. Ever changing, growing and maturing, a community always needs to appreciate the present while focusing on the future. This year Nebraska Community Foundation (NCF) is celebrating its 30th anniversary of helping Nebraska hometowns do just that: create new community capacity, better teamwork and a progressive vision for a future that motivates and inspires the next generation to want to be in community with us. In November NCF held its...
Hometowns in Greater Nebraska have so much to offer. At Nebraska Community Foundation, we work with over 270 communities and 1,500 volunteers across the state who are utilizing the assets unique to their places to fuel community development that will continue to attract new generations of Nebraskans. Homegrown philanthropy is a major asset in this endeavor. Charitable dollars and endowment payout are being used to fund projects and programs that directly benefit young people and their families...
Humans have a penchant for looking far ahead. Ask a room of kids what they want to be when they grow up, and you’ll quickly discover just how creative we can be when it comes to envisioning our future. Along the same lines, if you ask members of a community about their dreams for their hometown, you’ll leave with a long list. The tricky thing about the future, though, is that it hasn’t happened yet. Even with the most meticulous planning, events undoubtedly unfold in ways we can’t quite foretel...
Recently, amid renewed concern about “the brain drain,” my thoughts returned to a particularly inspiring moment during Nebraska Community Foundation’s 2023 annual celebration. At the end of her lunch plenary speech, Takaylynn Hergott of Hebron asked any attendees under the age of 25 to stand. As the applause faded, she told the audience to look around the hall at her peers who remained standing. This, she said, is the future. It was a powerful scene and it hinted at something we’ve heard t...
Rancher Lemoyne Dailey says he's careful about how he "makes his footprints" when he works on his land near Thedford. The rolling Sandhills are fragile, Dailey said, the grasses and sands easily torn up and tough to restore. Over the past decade, Dailey has been fielding visits from utility workers surveying his land, planning a power transmission route and asking for a signature on the dotted line. He's one of a group of Sandhills landowners steadfastly refusing to sign. "You don't know the...
As a licensed practical nurse, Alyx Kurpgeweit recognizes when a patient is in distress. As a mother, Kurpgeweit realized her son, Rhett, who was six months old at the time, was struggling. "He wasn't sitting up yet and wasn't meeting normal milestones," she said. A discussion with the family's pediatrician led Alyx, husband Matt and Rhett to Boys Town National Research Hospital, in Omaha, where Rhett was diagnosed with lissencephaly, more commonly known as Smooth Brain Syndrome. Ironically,...
One of the best parts of my role at Nebraska Community Foundation is listening to our NCF affiliated fund volunteers speak about their communities with pride. These local leaders invest so much time, treasure and talent into their hometowns and often go unsung. So, when an opportunity arises to showcase their success, we rarely turn it down. Such was the case in September, when a group of 17 visitors from Canada toured Nebraska to witness the progress small towns can make when residents are...
JEFF YOST President & CEO Nebraska Community Foundation Hope alone doesn’t go very far. Hope alone assumes we need only to sit back and wait for good things to happen. That our communities are predestined to succeed merely because that’s the expectation. There’s also a hint of resignation, like everything is just outside our control. We hope because we cannot see ourselves making a difference. But Nebraskans don’t like warming the bench. At Nebraska Community Foundation, we embrace the phrase “active hope” – which functions both as a noun and...
SUBMITTED ARTICLE O'Neill Community Foundation Fund and Holt County Economic Development Fund welcome Emily Morrow and Katie Hawk home for the summer to help local leadership further their missions. Morrow and Hawk are both students at the University of Nebraska – Lincoln. Morrow graduated from UNL in May with a dual degree in advertising and public relations and broadcasting. Hawk will begin her sophomore year in the fall at UNL studying business management. Both began their duties in May a...
