Mountain Recreation Creates Foundation to Support Eagle County Community
Hearing is easy, listening takes skill, but taking action requires courage. The Mountain Recreation Foundation was established for several reasons, primarily because Mountain Rec highly values listening to our community, and it was time to take action on what our community was saying.
Like many Parks and Rec Foundations throughout the country, the Foundation will serve to facilitate donations from residents, organizations, and companies to help fund the District’s essential work.
Built upon the same core belief of the District that everyone deserves to be healthy and happy, the Foundation will support the District across three pillars identified to maximize our community’s return on its investment. The Foundation aims to privately fund capital improvements, create an ever-flowing scholarship endowment, and endow necessary resources to preserve the District’s high quality facilities.
We are excited to announce the Foundation has recently received its official 501(c)3 designation and has begun supporting our whole community in Eagle County, as an additional funding resource for the District. So whether you live in our District (Edwards to Dotsero and McCoy) or not, we still want you to have access to live healthy and happy.
At the top of the Foundation’s most urgent priorities is All Access Rec, the District’s proposed capital improvement project across Edwards, Eagle, and Gypsum. We asked, listened, and found that through our April 2021 capital survey District voters agreed that facility improvements are a vital and worthwhile pursuit.
Since June, the Foundation has been reaching out to individuals, groups, corporations, and other entities to talk about All Access Rec – and, so far, they’ve raised nearly $100,000 in gifts and pledges, with 100% of our District Board pledging their support and including the first corporate gift from Holy Cross Energy. This is just the beginning and will offset the cost to the public by placing those additional dollars towards facility improvements.
“The Mountain Recreation Foundation is a significant strategic addition, especially as we approach November’s ballot,” offers board president Mike McCormack, “Its work significantly reduces the cost impacts associated with not just facility improvements, but with programs themselves. It enhances the District’s multi-generational and multi-cultural reach while also increasing attainability to those in need.”
With 11 Foundation Board members, recruited from towns up and down the district (and beyond) over the last eight months, the board represents our diverse constituency and provides a way so that more underrepresented voices have a seat at the table. We are proud to have Mike McCormack as our Board President, Faviola Alderete as our Board VP, Chris Pryor as our Board Secretary, and Mike Murray as our Board Treasurer. Additional board members include Fatima Becerra, Maren Cerimele, Timothy Haley, Bratzo Horruitiner, Derek Kraus, Shawna Topor, and Melina Valsecia.
The Foundation also provides a way for people to show their support and appreciation for the organization that taught their daughter to throw a ball or their son to shoot a puck, for the classes that helped them reach a previously unattainable fitness goal, or who offered chances to play a game with friends after work. Charitable giving is a way for people to add to our scholarship fund to make sure that every person who wants to play can play—regardless of their ability to pay. It’s a way to both recognize the district’s contribution while paying it forward at the same time.
Mountain Rec values transparency and we believe in the community. When you talk, we listen—and we act and the Mountain Rec Foundation is just one of the many examples of us doing just that.
To learn more about the capital improvements road ahead and to get involved, visit: